Is TV Making You Smarter?
Just last week, I wrote about this study that said that using e-mail and SMS would decrease your IQ. Now this week, there is this article in the New York Times, that argues on a different wavelength.
We all know the common discussion - television is full of violence and sex. The value of its contents declines and there is not much thinking involved - basically, we are just watching plain gore.
Not according to this article which follows the basic presumption that the story line, while may be more violent, is more complicated and challenge and enhance the thinking ability of the ones watching.
The author is not denying that the standard of television was falling but he states that "another kind of televised intelligence is on the rise. Think of the cognitive benefits conventionally ascribed to reading: attention, patience, retention, the parsing of narrative threads. Over the last half-century, programming on TV has increased the demands it places on precisely these mental faculties. This growing complexity involves three primary elements: multiple threading, flashing arrows and social networks." What means that basically, TV becomes more realistic. Good characters have bad habits and can fail, there is more than one bad character and a variety of shades exist.
The article doesn't come with facts and data to support its thesis, but provides plain anecdotal background. Nevertheless, an interesting point of view that has been taken here.
(By Asia Business Consulting)
We all know the common discussion - television is full of violence and sex. The value of its contents declines and there is not much thinking involved - basically, we are just watching plain gore.
Not according to this article which follows the basic presumption that the story line, while may be more violent, is more complicated and challenge and enhance the thinking ability of the ones watching.
The author is not denying that the standard of television was falling but he states that "another kind of televised intelligence is on the rise. Think of the cognitive benefits conventionally ascribed to reading: attention, patience, retention, the parsing of narrative threads. Over the last half-century, programming on TV has increased the demands it places on precisely these mental faculties. This growing complexity involves three primary elements: multiple threading, flashing arrows and social networks." What means that basically, TV becomes more realistic. Good characters have bad habits and can fail, there is more than one bad character and a variety of shades exist.
The article doesn't come with facts and data to support its thesis, but provides plain anecdotal background. Nevertheless, an interesting point of view that has been taken here.
(By Asia Business Consulting)
posted by Andreas @ 12:50 pm
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