Science Current Event No. 1: Talking to Yourself Makes You Smarter

Assistant Professor Gary Lupyan

   Have you ever caught one of your friends talking to themselves, and looked at them like they were crazy? Well, it turns out that they're not; in fact, they're helping their brains! Professors Gary Lupyan and Daniel Swingley created a test to see if talking to oneself is actually helpful.  There were two experiments, broken into two scenarios; experiment one had a group of volunteers find a picture of an object they were told to look for silently, while another group of volunteers were told to find a picture of an object while saying said object's name out loud. 

   

Professors Lupyan and Swingley, when going over the data, discovered that the people who said the object's name out loud found the object faster, compared to ones who looked for the object silently. 

Associate Professor Daniel Swingley

The second experiment had volunteers look for objects like you would when grocery shopping; one group did so silently, and another said the object's name to their selves. Just like the first experiment, data showed that the people who said the name of the object to their self found it quicker. The professors found another interesting fact, too: if a person did not recognize the name of the object they were supposed to find, they couldn't discover it as quick, even if they said the name out loud. 

Now you know; the next time you lose your phone, keys, or anything else, act crazy and start talking to yourself!

Questions for Further Research:

1) Why did the scientists decide to do this project, or what did they see in the real world that inspired them to do this experiment?

2) What part of the brain does this experiment  help?

3) If this project is redone, what variables could be used?

Source:
Condliffe, J. (n.d.). Retrieved from: http://gizmodo.com/5903023/talking-to-yourself-makes-you-smarter