HOW many times have you been to a house to find the host switching on the television soon as you arrive? How many times have you found the the host glued to the set and admitting that he had been watching it all afternoon? God help us, you can now view your entire photo album and read a book on your television screen if you are so inclined. So completely have we now become the thinking and looking into the box people that we should be surprised that we still have friends about.
But, I have Friends on television, some of you may protest. Ha-ha-ha, hee-hee-hee and all those mind-disturbingly boring overspills of canned laughter around the actions of stupid, silly people and their antics in the lounge. No, not those Friends but real people who hurt if you hit them, who laugh real laughter if they appreciate your wit and who serve you real food on plates, not the kind who serve themselves food as you watch them being paid millions to make you sit down and fall sick and laugh hysterically thinking that there’s medicine too from that.
Oh for crying out loud, switch off that TV set. Let’s sit and talk; better, let’s walk. The biggest killer in the house is not the roof caving in or the kitchen knife making you bleed but that sofa in front of the television set. Physical inactivity and congealed brain parts.
Less screen time actually boosts a child’s cognitive skills. Away from the screen the child has to interact with real people, deal with problems, negotiate his or her way out of situations.
In very early years the child develops his or her theory of mind by observing and experiencing how other people act and react. Even for adults, walking with a friend while discussing a book gives the brain a boost. No, it’s not the book that you want to look at but the company, the conversation, and the giving and taking and the pauses and the listening and the thinking of where and when you should butt in and when you should not. Social interaction increases cognitive skills, period.
The brain constructs this picture all the time, even in a computer mediated communication network. Group identity is formed even when members of the computer mediated group — say in an emailing relationship or in video conferencing set-ups — from impressions gained or through the identification of salient features. These are cognitive functions that shape us and make us and they have to be fed and trained so that they can work to our advantage.
Researchers like Dr Oscar Ybarra of the University of Michigan have found that social interaction has cognitive benefits. Answering a question posed to him in a webchat on how this works, he said: “Many of these social cognitive processes (call it a form of social intelligence) rely on core executive functions, and these executive functions when activated can then be used to perform related tasks that may not be social in nature.”
When you talk to another person your brain tries to build a “model” of the other person — his or her beliefs, desire, intentions whilst at the same time you are also trying to keep control in following the line of argument, choosing the words to use, trying not to offend, being pleasant and so on. All skills that develop the brain in useful areas of executive function.
The cognitive functions of the brain benefit more from a cooperative approach than a competitive one. Trying to understand a person is an exercise of many brain parts, a boost to the cognitive function even before taking in the benefits that that brings to the relationship. A cooperative, compared to a competitive approach in social interaction brings benefits like the sharing of knowledge, mutual help and an interest in making things connect.
Besides those benefits from a co-operative approach, Dr Ybarra found from research that asking participants to understand their counterparts, even in a competitive relationship, makes them perform better in subsequent executive function tests.
The brain exercises, even from simple conversations with other people, are beneficial for cognitive function. When we talk to another person our brain does things that it doesn’t do (or doesn’t do so intensely) when we are watching television. In a conversation we need to focus, we need to monitor ourselves, and we also need a working memory to engage another in conversation. What benefits from that? These are tools that are necessary in life to meet its myriad problems.
Let children talk and teach them rules and etiquette. Learning rules will give them perspective and direction. Joining a book discussion group will, without question, boost their cognitive function at various important levels: conversation, thinking, understanding, control, the importance of the other person’s views and the need to listen and to engage with them.
There used to be a programme of BBC television that seemed to offer a contradiction in the act: Why Don’t You Switch Off Your Television Set and Go Out and Do Something Less Boring Instead? Bully for that.
The writer is an NST columnist