Text, Don't Talk

This came from AFP/Relaxnews.

"Do you often have the urge to chat with a friend while stuck on a train, subway or waiting on a never-ending line? In a new study,Cornell University researchers are saying you should resist the urge to dial as it irritates and distracts all the people around you — yes, even if you whisper.

For those stuck by a chatty Kathy feeling frustrated and annoyed with the distraction, well that is completely normal according to Michael Goldstein, assistant professor of psychology at Cornell University and Lauren Emberson, PhD candidate in psychology at Cornell University in their research to be published in the June edition of the journal Psychological Science.

Eavesdropping cannot be avoided and someone else’s very important minutia or hot gossip becomes an irritant not because the person is loud but rather because only half the conversation or “halfalogue”, can be heard and understood. This rattles the brain coupled with the inability to ignore the chatter.

Apparently even your meditation mantra won’t do the trick. Emberson explained, “Hearing half a conversation is distracting because we are unable to predict the succession of speech. We believe this finding helps reveal how we understand language in conversation: We actively predict what the person is going to say next and this reduces the difficulty of language comprehension.”

“People are often more irritated by nearby cell phone conversations rather than conversations between two people who are physically present. Since halfalogues really are more distracting and you can’t tune them out, this could explain why people are irritated.”

So be kind, text don’t call, or read, take photos, play a game, surf the web, catch-up on emails — there are so many ways to keep you distracted with your smartphone’s applications that you do not need to distract everyone in your vicinity.

Also the results of the Interphone study, a multi-centre international control case study, published their findings in the advance online edition of International Journal of Epidemiology on May 17.

The researchers concluded that there is not enough conclusive research to support that cell phone use causes or doesn’t cause brain cancer — why not err on the side of caution since the participants of the study were not classified as long-term heavy-use mobile phone users"


so be kind to your neighbours on a journey, text don't talk.