Steel Trap Speech Memory
In a study conducted by Stanford University and Carnegie Mellon University psychology departments, researchers found that people can think almost as fast as they speak. The researchers tested two subjects who were asked to read out loud from news articles about the Iraq war.
One subject was an expert on international relations and the other had no prior knowledge of foreign policy but they both read at 100 words per minute without fail. However, when this same person continued to read another article about a domestic issue like changing traffic lights or investing in public transportation, he messed up four times in a row before he finally got it right.
Even though the expert had prepared for this task, the new material was not familiar to him. The researchers were able to show how long it took the person to read this first article and how long it took him to read the following one. On average, he read 33.6 seconds and his processing speed was around 10,000 words per minute.
This means he could have memorized 100 words in three minutes, or memorize 50 words every two minutes while speaking at 200 or 300 words per minute. This has implications for anyone who needs to memorize anything that is unfamiliar to you because your brain can save time by just reading it quickly out loud. On the other hand, it would also be useful to someone who needs to memorize information and their voice is slower.
One study even showed that if you learn a list of 40 words and speak them out loud as fast as possible, you will remember them better than if you read them. You should read out loud first to make sure that your speech is understandable before trying to memorize. You can also split up the words when you are speaking in order to group similar ones like "on" "in" or "off." This makes the task easier, which is why the experts in this study were able to memorize 50 words during each 2-minute time period.
Articles Written in Slow Motion Using a Microphone
Title: Art with PercepTivity: The Effect of Speaking Slowly On Memory for Text
In this experiment, participants were given a list of 100 words and were asked to speak them out loud as fast as possible. Afterward, the participants had to read the words back from their personal lists. Participants in the slow group remembered 33% of the words at both 1 min and 2 min after they had spoken them. The fast group only remembered 19% of the words at 1 min and 14% at 2 min after they had spoken them. This amounted to an overall difference of 6 percentage points between groups, which is a big difference.
Memory for Words
Title: Speaking Slowly Improves The Memory For Words
Lighting Effects on the Brain What Does The Brain Take In? We take in light in three ways: through the thalamus, through the visual cortex, and through direct input from photoreceptors. The thalamus signals to the brain that an image is entering our visual system, while the cortex determines what we will see. We've now decided (we are always deciding), to pay attention to specific aspects of these images. How fast we process the image and how well it is processed depends on a lot of factors such as expectation and physiology. For example, how fast you are speaking, how old you are, and whether or not you were smoking will all effect your results.
Lighting Effects on the Brain: The Thalamus
We need to take in light from the eyes in order to see. It is necessary that light go through the retina and then thoracic nerve to get to our brains so that we can process it according to what we expect it to be. This communication goes through a portion of the thalamus called The Thalamic Reticular Nuclei.
The Reticular Nuclei's Purpose
The Reticular Nuclei is the portion of the thalamus that acts like a relay center. It takes in all of the information coming from our bodies and then passes it on to the parts of our brain that will make use of it. You've probably heard about someone who is said to have a "thick skin," "thick skull" or "low pain tolerance." These are references to this portion of the thalamus, which determines how we perceive physical sensations and whether or not we feel them at all.
To put this in perspective, if someone hits you on the head with a hammer, your thalamus could determine that there is pain involved and trigger your amygdala to tell you to get away from the source of the pain. But if someone is just playing around with a hammer and taps you on the head, your thalamus will most likely decide that no pain is involved and let your amygdala know that it's harmless.
A simplified way to look at it would be to imagine that our bodies contain a series of lights. These lights are all working properly and are sending signals to our thalamus telling it how bright they are. Our decision-making center then interprets these signals according to what we expect them to be.
For example, let's say that the lights indicate how hungry we are. If you had just eaten dinner and were stuffed, you might ignore the signals that your stomach was empty. This is an example of your decision to ignore certain signals. However, if you hadn't eaten yet, then when you see food, your brain would ask the thalamus to pay closer attention. The thalamus would then ask the part of your brain that deals with hunger to make sure that it takes in all of these signals so it can make sense of them. The thalamus also receives information from other systems like our sense of smell and hearing which are closely linked to hunger.
What does the Reticular Nuclei do when it gets a signal? It basically tells the brain to take in more sensory information which will help us decipher what is going on. This is why our visual cortex loves working with certain lights and why we can get headaches when our lights aren't working properly.
Lighting Effects of the Reticular Nuclei in The Brain: Visual Cortex
It seems that a lot of things are important to this part of the brain and if you want your brain to process them fast, mastering certain visual effects might help. For example, we can train our eyes to automatically change their focus depending on if an object is very far away or close up. The visual cortex can also be trained to recognize shapes, patterns and movements. Learning something like this will speed up the process of our brain interpreting signals it receives from the thalamus.
The Process of The Reticular Nuclei
The Reticular Nuclei basically takes in signals like these:
"This is becoming brighter" "I feel something" "I am hungry" "I want some food right now." "This is a weapon or tool." And decides whether or not we should pay attention to it and if so, what we should do about it. It constantly evaluates what is happening in our bodies and based on its findings tells the mind what to think and do next.
Conclusion:
The Reticular Nuclei is the part of the brain that interprets signals from our whole body and different areas of the brain interpret these signals in different ways. The thalamus acts as a relay between all parts of the brain, passing information from our whole body to our mind and making decisions based on what it sees.
Tags:
Steel Trap Speech Memory