Spit out Your Chewing Gum

吐出你的口香糖吧！

Having trouble remembering phone numbers or a professor's lecture? Try spitting out your chewing gum.

你是否不能记住电话号码或者教授的讲座内容呢?如果是，那就赶紧吐出你的口香糖吧。

A new British study suggests that chewing flavorless gum can interfere with short-term memory.

一项新的英国研究表明咀嚼已经无味儿的口香糖会干扰短时记忆。

The research, published in The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, challenges the prevailing notion that chewing gum — at least when it's flavored — is a performance enhancer that can boost brain power. It also provides further proof that human beings are woefully inept at completing two tasks at once.

很多人认为口香糖至少在有味儿时是一种可以增强大脑活动的兴奋剂。而由实验心理学季刊发布的这项调查研究向这种普遍观念发出了挑战。研究还进一步证实人类根本不可能同时完成两项任务活动。

Some argue that gum improves concentration by triggering an increase in blood flow through the brain, said lead author Michail Kozlov of Cardiff University. But his team found that an oral activity such as gum chewing can interfere with the process that's normally used to remember verbal content.

卡迪夫大学的首席作家Michail Kozlov说，有人认为咀嚼口香糖可以通过增加大脑的血流量来提高注意力。但是，他的团队发现嚼口香糖的口腔活动会干扰用于记忆语言信息的活动。

The researchers from Cardiff University used classic short-term memory challenges, with and without gum. In one test, the volunteers were told to chew vigorously and asked to remember a sequence of randomly ordered letters, such as P, V, B, C, D, G, T. Another group repeated the experiment, but chewed naturally.

卡迪夫大学的研究者们分别对嚼口香糖者和不嚼口香糖的两组人员进行了经典的短时记忆挑战。在一组测试中，志愿者们被要求拼命咀嚼口香糖并记住一串次序错乱的字母P, V, B, C, D, G, T。在另一组测试中，志愿者们同样也要记住那串字母，但是在自然的咀嚼状态下。

In the second test, students chewed the flavorless gum and tried to pick up the missing item in the sequence. For example, 7 is missing from this list of digits ranging 1 through 9: 28149365.

在第二组测试中，志愿者们咀嚼着已经无味儿的口香糖试图找出那串字母中缺失的字母。例如，在一串包括1到9的数字序列28149365中，7是缺失数字。

It didn't matter whether the volunteers chewed vigorously or naturally. In both cases, "chewing has an overall adverse affect on serial recall," researchers wrote.

无论志愿者们是拼命地咀嚼口香糖还是自然地咀嚼口香糖，都是无关紧要的。“在两组测试中，咀嚼活动都从整体上对字母串的回忆都起到了反面作用。”研究者写道。

Flavor, however, is a still a wild card; it's what may contribute to the benefits of gum chewing. In a 2002 study, the first to investigate the effects of gum chewing on short-term memory, the participants chewed mint-flavored gum and performed better on short-term word and memory tasks than those who did not chew gum.

香味或许就是嚼口香糖的益处。2002年的这项研究首次将咀嚼口香糖对短时记忆的影响作为研究对象，嚼薄荷口香糖的参与者在短时记忆挑战时的表现要比不嚼口香糖的好。

  

But because chewing gum loses its flavor in several minutes — and unflavored gum is generally unpalatable — "it seems advisable that chewing gum is only considered a performance enhancer as long as its flavor lasts," the researches noted. Or as long as you have money to buy more gum.

但是，由于口香糖在被咀嚼几分钟后就会失去滋味，这味同嚼蜡的口香糖是很难吃的。“这样，只要口香糖的香味持续，或者你有钱去买更多的口香糖，口香糖被认为是一种兴奋剂的说法似乎是可取的。”研究者写道。