You know how, like, your mind verbalizes and repeats instructions, directions, phone numbers and so on, as they’re given?
Except when, like, it doesn’t?
The process of replaying such verbal info is called a “phonological loop” and it frequently gets impaired when you’re overwhelmed with work, or maybe if you have ADHD, brain damage or dementia. Now a new device purports to help this verbal replay, by literally replaying sound bites:
The memory device has a speaker, a microphone and controls for recording and playing audio. To use it, a user presses ‘record’ and says a phrase they want to keep in mind. The aid repeats this phrase at intervals of two minutes or, in another mode, it prompts the user to repeat the phrase at the similar intervals, repeatedly bugging them if they fail to do so…
…Tests involving the memory aid on a small number of people without memory problems have been positive, Bogen says. “They tried it out in a variety of situations and said that it did help keep track of what they were doing,” he says. Users sometimes found the repetitive cues irritating, if their memory was not being stretched. But they also reported that the device was helpful when faced with a lot of tasks to do in a short period of time.
The device, conceived by Prof. Daniel Bogen from Penn, might be incorporated into a cell phone or wristwatch. Now if he could just get to work on a video version, that could help us to remember faces…
Via Engadget…
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