by Sandy Sand
Okay. I do remember. I was being as silly as the study.
Where do they come up with these nonsensical studies and who are the fools who pay for them? And why do newspaper editors allow their lazy reporters to get away with blindly rewriting press releases with no thought to the efficacy of the study, who paid for it or the study's conclusions?
I read this study with my usual skepticism and came up with more questions than ever about what were the so-called researchers thinking when they did a study on older people not remembering too "good" when they're distracted.
Like, doesn't everybody?
Being an early ancient, I can clearly remember having things go in one head and out the other, because I was distracted. Real bummer when that happens especially while driving and an errant trash can dashes in front of your car.
So, they threw a bunch of oldsters into a noisy lab and tested their concentrationess, and concluded that older people don't concentrate too well when distracted.
Golly gee!
Were any of their victims somewhat deaf or hard of seeing? They wouldn't be so easily distracted by sights and sounds.
How many of them had even heard of concentrating on something to the exclusion of anything else. It take years to develop that talent unless you're blessed with the single-mindedness gene.
Old as I am, I remember writing news stories while sitting at my desk in a noisy bullpen surrounded by an infernal babble of reporters and ad people hawking their wares. There was even a time when I wrote a story while standing in the unemployment line. Now I write with the radio on and only hear an occasional word uttered by the disembodied voices.
The only thing that distracted me was the hugely fat ad saleslady keeping the air-conditioning set at below Arctic zero. It's damn hard to think or type when you're shivering and your fingers are frozen stiff.
I can't imagine why the editor got pissed at me when one day I had the backshop guys literally pick up my desk and move it to the front office with all the chattering display ad people.
But I digress.The study was based on face recognition.
I dare anyone to see a face for one second, and then recall if it had been flashed before their eyes before.
Guess what, geniuses, I couldn't remember a face when I was younger and I can't do it now.
Heaven help me if I ever have to pass that are-you-going-soft-in-the-brain test and have to count backwards by sevens from one hundred, nor can I recite the times tables above five with any degree of accuracy.
I could never have done that at any age. Or worse, what if they tested me on remembering names, book or movie title. Everyone is you know, what's-his-face, and I have to describe movie or novel plots and let someone else come up with the title.
Unlike the average dufuss on the street that Sean Hannity interviews to see how current they are on what everyone should know, I unfortunately know the name of the vice president and I can find obscure and well-known countries on a map. We all have our talents.
There was also a degree of unfainess to the study, as they used more youngsters than oldsters, which didn't balance the study, but as far as I concerned, skewed and skewered the results.
Read the study for youself and draw your own conclusions, that is...if you can remember to do it.
Source: http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_11084242
No comments:
Post a Comment