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21 Mar 2006 - 19:42
I find this fascinating:
I got hooked on soap operas when I was 14. My best friend, Rosemary, was a fan of DAYS OF OUR LIVES, and after she told me how great it was a couple of times, I started watching, too. After that I kept on watching, off and on, until I was.....somewhere in my early 30s, I think. My experience fits Fogel's thesis. Years ago Martha Denckla told me that the brain does not finish developing until we reach age 35. Up til then, myelinization isn't complete. (NOT FACT-CHECKED, AND AN NIH WEBSITE IS TELLING ME MYELINIZATION IS COMPLETE BY AGE 6-7. SO EITHER I'M WRONG, IT'S WRONG, MARTHA'S WRONG, OR THIS FINDING HAS CHANGED IN THE PAST 10 YEARS...) I think (NOT FACT-CHECKED, EITHER!) myelinization is connected to attention. (We're reaching the point where we're going to need our own personal Neuroscience Consultant on ktm...) In any case, I didn't stop watching the soaps for any particular reason. I just 'lost interest.' At the time, the best reason I could come up with was that I'd gotten too 'old' for them. But of course I was too old for them at age 14, too. Reading Fogel's observation about 'parasocial relationships' and attention, I thought: WOW. I really did get too old for the soaps.*
folk psychology Martha said something else that I found utterly fascinating. She said that you could 'see' the age at which myelinization is complete in the way people behave. For example, it's only after age 35 that prisoners released from jail do not become recidivists. Ordinary people, she said, 'know' that age 35 is significant; that's why our constitution specifies that no person younger than 35 can be elected president. I love that! She's right. Regular human beings who've never heard the word myelinization perceive a difference between a 29 year old and a 35 year old. I knew she was right the minute she said it, because of the rule I had developed back when I was dating in Los Angeles. (Now there's a riveting parasocial situation for you.) My stated rule was:
b) the person who had been left, not the person who did the leaving c) still semi-fond of his ex When I met Ed, he met all 3 criteria, only he went me one better: although his wife had done a fair amount of 'leaving' throughout their marriage (he'd done some leaving, too; it was the times), he made the decision to end the marriage. Which made him not heartbroken. Even better! Bayes strikes again.
that reminds me I read this article, on The Return of Patriarchy, by Philip Longman, on the train to Boston Friday. It's a hoot.
* Of course, now I'm watching WWE wrestling. But I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be watching WWE wrestling if I didn't have an 11-year old son.....ALTHOUGH I would watch John Cena any time, any place. I just have to hope that's not a Sign.
sources:
Teenage Brain: a work in progress (NIH)
frontal lobes, executive function, & IQ
hovering is good (MiddleWeb)
being your child's frontal lobes
executive function, IQ, & hovering, part 1
the discovery of executive function, part 2
executive function self-test
presidents & criminals & the frontal lobes
page splatter
page splatter & the frontal lobes
Dear Abby
Susan on dating
Catherine's brain-based dating rule
-- CatherineJohnson - 21 Mar 2006 Back to main page.
Please consider registering as a regular user.
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Upon a critical reading of the excerpt quoted above, I have the following thoughts and questions:
Insert "and talk shows" after "soap operas" in the above comment, where appropriate. :) -- GoogleMaster - 21 Mar 2006
I always tell my single friend to hunt down a young widower (who stood by the wife) first. Then divorced, then don't bother. Well, maybe. There are exceptions, I suppose. Soap operas are only fun if there's someone else to talk to about them. Even then, they're just a juvenile time waster. Unfortunately, I had friends who had roles on various ones so it was easy to get hooked. They are mind numbing in any case, much like the rest of tv. Except for 24. That's kind of fun. -- SusanS - 21 Mar 2006
He doesn't think soaps rot your brain. He thinks soaps focus your brain. Possibly. -- CatherineJohnson - 21 Mar 2006
I always tell my single friend to hunt down a young widower (who stood by the wife) first. Then divorced, then don't bother. WITANDWISDOM !! hoo boy, those widowers are GREAT GUYS When I did my book on happy marriages, I met a blissfully married couple. The guy was EXACTLY THAT: a widower who stood by his wife and took round-the-clock care of her throughout her illness. His second wife was SOOOOOO lucky, and she knew it. -- CatherineJohnson - 21 Mar 2006
One of my friends watches soaps, though not for the usual reason. She has Chronic Fatigue, and so when she's at home all day and bored but too tired to read etc, she watches soaps. She says it's great - regardless of how long she's been healthy she always knows what's happening and can follow the plot! -- SamanthaRawson - 22 Mar 2006
My aunt was an English teacher who never understood why people watched soaps. She was very well read, Saul Bellow and Ray Bradbury being among her favorites. When she retired she got totally hooked. She laughed at that fact all the time. I think some of those soaps have characters that have been with them for 30 years. I sense from the older crowd that it's like a friend you've known forever. I guess when I'm in a nursing home (with serious cognitive issues) I might retry it, but the dialogue alone is just too goofy. -- SusanS - 22 Mar 2006
soap operas, Oprah, and older women
I find this fascinating:
Older women who say talk shows and soap operas are their favorite TV programs tend to score more poorly on tests of memory, attention and other cognitive skills, researchers reported Monday. A study of 289 older women without dementia found that those who rated talk shows and soaps as their favorite programs performed more poorly on tests of memory, attention and mental quickness than their peers who cited other types of shows. What's more, they were at greater risk of showing signs of clinical impairment. For example, compared with women who preferred to watch news programs, those who favored soaps were more than seven times more likely to show signs of impairment on one of the tests, while talk show fans were more than 13 times more likely to demonstrate impairment. "Those findings are quite robust," Fogel told Reuters Health. [snip] According to Fogel, a potential explanation rests in the fact that talk shows and soap operas involve so-called "parasocial relationships," where viewers feel a connection to a show's characters or host. Such shows may, for instance, be better able to hold the attention of older women with some cognitive impairment.
I got hooked on soap operas when I was 14. My best friend, Rosemary, was a fan of DAYS OF OUR LIVES, and after she told me how great it was a couple of times, I started watching, too. After that I kept on watching, off and on, until I was.....somewhere in my early 30s, I think. My experience fits Fogel's thesis. Years ago Martha Denckla told me that the brain does not finish developing until we reach age 35. Up til then, myelinization isn't complete. (NOT FACT-CHECKED, AND AN NIH WEBSITE IS TELLING ME MYELINIZATION IS COMPLETE BY AGE 6-7. SO EITHER I'M WRONG, IT'S WRONG, MARTHA'S WRONG, OR THIS FINDING HAS CHANGED IN THE PAST 10 YEARS...) I think (NOT FACT-CHECKED, EITHER!) myelinization is connected to attention. (We're reaching the point where we're going to need our own personal Neuroscience Consultant on ktm...) In any case, I didn't stop watching the soaps for any particular reason. I just 'lost interest.' At the time, the best reason I could come up with was that I'd gotten too 'old' for them. But of course I was too old for them at age 14, too. Reading Fogel's observation about 'parasocial relationships' and attention, I thought: WOW. I really did get too old for the soaps.*
folk psychology Martha said something else that I found utterly fascinating. She said that you could 'see' the age at which myelinization is complete in the way people behave. For example, it's only after age 35 that prisoners released from jail do not become recidivists. Ordinary people, she said, 'know' that age 35 is significant; that's why our constitution specifies that no person younger than 35 can be elected president. I love that! She's right. Regular human beings who've never heard the word myelinization perceive a difference between a 29 year old and a 35 year old. I knew she was right the minute she said it, because of the rule I had developed back when I was dating in Los Angeles. (Now there's a riveting parasocial situation for you.) My stated rule was:
- no never-married men over the age of 33
b) the person who had been left, not the person who did the leaving c) still semi-fond of his ex When I met Ed, he met all 3 criteria, only he went me one better: although his wife had done a fair amount of 'leaving' throughout their marriage (he'd done some leaving, too; it was the times), he made the decision to end the marriage. Which made him not heartbroken. Even better! Bayes strikes again.
that reminds me I read this article, on The Return of Patriarchy, by Philip Longman, on the train to Boston Friday. It's a hoot.
* Of course, now I'm watching WWE wrestling. But I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be watching WWE wrestling if I didn't have an 11-year old son.....ALTHOUGH I would watch John Cena any time, any place. I just have to hope that's not a Sign.
sources:
Teenage Brain: a work in progress (NIH)
frontal lobes, executive function, & IQ
hovering is good (MiddleWeb)
being your child's frontal lobes
executive function, IQ, & hovering, part 1
the discovery of executive function, part 2
executive function self-test
presidents & criminals & the frontal lobes
page splatter
page splatter & the frontal lobes
Dear Abby
Susan on dating
Catherine's brain-based dating rule
-- CatherineJohnson - 21 Mar 2006 Back to main page.
Comments
After entering a comment, users can login anonymously as KtmGuest (password: guest) when prompted.Please consider registering as a regular user.
Look here for syntax help.
Upon a critical reading of the excerpt quoted above, I have the following thoughts and questions:
- Causation, correlation, or coincidence? Does watching soap operas rot your brain, or do women who watch soap operas tend to have less cognitive ability to begin with, or is there an external cause that causes high soap opera watching to be correlated positively with low cognitive ability? Or are the results coincidental?
- They compared the cognitive ability of women who watch soap operas with that of women who watch news, but did they compare the cognitive ability of either group with what it used to be? Did they compare with younger women who watch the same sorts of programs?
- What about the cognitive ability of older women who watch very little or no TV at all? What about those who favor math and logic puzzles for entertainment? Word games and crossword puzzles?
- What is the margin of error?
- The bold-faced sentence in the last paragraph tends to suggest that "impaired women watch soap operas" rather than "soap operas rot your brain".
Insert "and talk shows" after "soap operas" in the above comment, where appropriate. :) -- GoogleMaster - 21 Mar 2006
I always tell my single friend to hunt down a young widower (who stood by the wife) first. Then divorced, then don't bother. Well, maybe. There are exceptions, I suppose. Soap operas are only fun if there's someone else to talk to about them. Even then, they're just a juvenile time waster. Unfortunately, I had friends who had roles on various ones so it was easy to get hooked. They are mind numbing in any case, much like the rest of tv. Except for 24. That's kind of fun. -- SusanS - 21 Mar 2006
He doesn't think soaps rot your brain. He thinks soaps focus your brain. Possibly. -- CatherineJohnson - 21 Mar 2006
I always tell my single friend to hunt down a young widower (who stood by the wife) first. Then divorced, then don't bother. WITANDWISDOM !! hoo boy, those widowers are GREAT GUYS When I did my book on happy marriages, I met a blissfully married couple. The guy was EXACTLY THAT: a widower who stood by his wife and took round-the-clock care of her throughout her illness. His second wife was SOOOOOO lucky, and she knew it. -- CatherineJohnson - 21 Mar 2006
One of my friends watches soaps, though not for the usual reason. She has Chronic Fatigue, and so when she's at home all day and bored but too tired to read etc, she watches soaps. She says it's great - regardless of how long she's been healthy she always knows what's happening and can follow the plot! -- SamanthaRawson - 22 Mar 2006
My aunt was an English teacher who never understood why people watched soaps. She was very well read, Saul Bellow and Ray Bradbury being among her favorites. When she retired she got totally hooked. She laughed at that fact all the time. I think some of those soaps have characters that have been with them for 30 years. I sense from the older crowd that it's like a friend you've known forever. I guess when I'm in a nursing home (with serious cognitive issues) I might retry it, but the dialogue alone is just too goofy. -- SusanS - 22 Mar 2006
| WebLogForm | |
|---|---|
| Title: | soap operas, Oprah, and older women |
| TopicType: | WebLog |
| SubjectArea: | CognitiveScience |
| LogDate: | 200603211441 |