Kozlov Michail D, Hughes Robert W, Jones Dylan M
School of Psychology, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2012;65(3):501-13. doi: 10.1080/17470218.2011.629054. Epub 2011 Dec 12.
Several studies have suggested that short-term memory is generally improved by chewing gum. However, we report the first studies to show that chewing gum impairs short-term memory for both item order and item identity. Experiment 1 showed that chewing gum reduces serial recall of letter lists. Experiment 2 indicated that chewing does not simply disrupt vocal-articulatory planning required for order retention: Chewing equally impairs a matched task that required retention of list item identity. Experiment 3 demonstrated that manual tapping produces a similar pattern of impairment to that of chewing gum. These results clearly qualify the assertion that chewing gum improves short-term memory. They also pose a problem for short-term memory theories asserting that forgetting is based on domain-specific interference given that chewing does not interfere with verbal memory any more than tapping. It is suggested that tapping and chewing reduce the general capacity to process sequences.
多项研究表明，嚼口香糖通常能改善短期记忆。然而，我们首次报告的研究表明，嚼口香糖会损害项目顺序和项目识别方面的短期记忆。实验1表明，嚼口香糖会降低字母列表的系列回忆能力。实验2表明，咀嚼不仅仅会干扰保持顺序所需的语音发音计划：咀嚼同样会损害一项匹配任务，该任务需要保持列表项目的识别。实验3证明，手动轻敲产生的损害模式与嚼口香糖相似。这些结果明确限定了嚼口香糖能改善短期记忆这一论断。它们也给短期记忆理论带来了一个问题，这些理论认为遗忘是基于特定领域的干扰，因为咀嚼对言语记忆的干扰并不比轻敲更多。有人认为，轻敲和咀嚼会降低处理序列的一般能力。
