Hours of TV viewing are associated with worse cognitive function”

oscar_ybarra

Prof. Oscar Ybarra

Ques­tion by Bob Lathan:
“In your clin­i­cal tri­al described in The Sharp­Brains Guide, both the social group and the intel­lec­tu­al activ­i­ties group got cog­ni­tive boosts, as opposed to the Sein­feld watch­ing group. While I am sure there is much more research to be done…isn’t it pret­ty clear that most peo­ple would ben­e­fit from watch­ing less TV and spend­ing more time doing com­plex social or intel­lec­tu­al stuff? What do you think about stats show­ing that the aver­age Amer­i­can spends 3 or 4 hours watch­ing TV per day?”

Answer by Prof. Oscar Ybarra:
“Dear Bob, I am in full agree­ment. In addi­tion to the exper­i­men­tal work we did, I have con­duct­ed large scale sur­veys with thou­sands of peo­ple and find that hours of TV view­ing are asso­ci­at­ed with worse cog­ni­tive func­tion. I believe oth­er researchers have obtained sim­i­lar results. Although TV view­ing (con­tent) varies much across indi­vid­u­als, it seems to con­sis­tent­ly pre­dict low­er cog­ni­tive func­tion. Assum­ing this rela­tion­ship is gen­er­al­ly causal (as our exper­i­men­tal work sug­gests), I do think there are more pro­duc­tive things peo­ple could be doing with the hours they devote to watch­ing TV on a dai­ly basis.”

> Keep read­ing Q&A tran­script with Prof. Oscar Ybar­ra on Social Inter­ac­tions and the Brain

> The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fitness

About SharpBrains

SHARPBRAINS is an independent think-tank and consulting firm providing services at the frontier of applied neuroscience, health, leadership and innovation.
SHARPBRAINS es un think-tank y consultoría independiente proporcionando servicios para la neurociencia aplicada, salud, liderazgo e innovación.

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