We tend to lessen physical effort in almost everything we do, including using language. We say “bye” instead of “goodbye” to get the same message across with just one syllable. While investigating how this effort-reduction influences sign languages that are elaborately more physical, linguists Nathan Sanders and Donna Jo Napoli came across a bodily detail. They dubbed it “reactive effort”. It is a physical effort to keep the body balanced while articulating a language. When a person uses a sign language, the movement of his or her arms can produce a rotational force on the torso. This would cause it to twist and rock if not counterbalanced by the reactive effort, using various stabilising muscles. A sign language’s vocabulary naturally avoids signs that call for extra reactive effort. All three sign languages studied by the linguists show nearly identical patterns in reactive effort reduction. This hints at a biological universal. It would encourage new lines of research, not just for sign languages, but for all languages — and perhaps some physical activities as well.
SNEAK PEEK
1. Relayed negatively
News stories about dreaded topics, including COVID-19, get increasingly more negative and more biased toward panic and fear as they are passed from person to person. This effect is not diminished even when the original unbiased facts are reintroduced. Who found it?
1. University of Warwick psychologist Thomas Hills
2. Patterns in play
All animals play. They run, roll and mock-wrestle with each other. And, while at it, they also communicate and strengthen bonds with each other. Who discovered that dogs and horses, despite all the differences, use strikingly similar moves and expressions when they play?
2. Elisabetta Palagi and team (University of Pisa)
3. Where are they?
Three different early humans lived at the same time in the same place two million years ago. What made the others vanish? Well, interbreeding and mixing, or fierce competition would explain it. Or we just killed them off. Who said “Tolerance is not a sapiens trademark”?
3. Yuval Noah Harari in ‘Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind’
4. Bronze, iron, gold
Sometime back archaeologists established that iron was used during the Bronze Age, though it was meteoric iron (not smelt iron from ores). Who, in Pylos (Greece), recently excavated a couple of beehive-shaped Bronze Age tombs that were littered with flakes of gold leaf?
4. UC archaeologists Jack Davis and Sharon Stocker
5. Transcriptional
When adult brain cells are injured, they reset themselves to an embryonic state. In this newly adopted embryonic state, under the right conditions, the cells become capable of re-growing new connections that can help to restore a lost function. Who identified the process?
5. Dr Mark H. Tuszynski (UC San Diego School of Medicine)
6. It isn’t eye contact
In conversations, half of the time our gaze is predominantly at the mouth of the person talking to us. People are not very sensitive to the “specific gaze focus” on a person’s face; rather, they perceive direct gaze towards the whole face as eye contact. Who studied the cue?
6. Dr Shane Rogers (Edith Cowan University)
7. Dryers beat towels
When it comes to spreading germs, modern hand dryers beat paper towels. Airborne germ counts are 27 times higher around jet air dryers, compared to the air around paper towel dispensers. And warm air hand dryers are not safe either. Who evidenced it in a study?
7. Mark Wilcox (Leeds School of Medicine)
8. No self-help tool
Go ahead and be grateful for the good things in your life, but gratitude intervention won’t help you feel less anxious or depressed. It is good to be more grateful. The problem is when we try to turn gratefulness into a self-help tool. Who said that “Gratitude can’t fix everything”?
8. David R. Cregg (Ohio State University) with Jennifer S. Cheavens
9. The butt-end of it
Even the disposal of cigarette butts needs attention. A used cigarette butt (cold to the touch) can in one day give off the equivalent of up to 14% of the nicotine that an actively burning cigarette emits. Who measured it willy-nilly but admitted that “I was absolutely surprised”?
9. NIST measurement scientist Dustin Poppendieck
[ANSWERS]
1. University of Warwick psychologist Thomas Hills
2. Elisabetta Palagi and team (University of Pisa)
3. Yuval Noah Harari in ‘Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind’
4. UC archaeologists Jack Davis and Sharon Stocker
5. Dr Mark H. Tuszynski (UC San Diego School of Medicine)
6. Dr Shane Rogers (Edith Cowan University)
7. Mark Wilcox (Leeds School of Medicine)
8. David R. Cregg (Ohio State University) with Jennifer S. Cheavens
9. NIST measurement scientist Dustin Poppendieck
QUIZ No. 951
1. Who calculated that visual events have only 100 milliseconds to engage the brain?
– Richard Krauzlis
– Santiago Ramon y Cajal
– Vernon B. Mountcastle
1. Richard Krauzlis
2. Who argued that social inequality and status competition spawn decline in fertility?
– Paul L. Hooper
– Craig Jackson Calhoun
– Nicholas A. Christakis
2. Paul L. Hooper
3. Who identified a type of sensory nerve endings in the gut that may talk to the brain?
– John Robin Warren
– Walter Clement Alvarez
– Nick J. Spencer
3. Nick J. Spencer
4. Who designed ‘The Money Game’, a visual method for teaching finance to children?
– Peter Thomas Bauer
– Sir Ralph Norman Angell
– William A. Barnett
4. Sir Ralph Norman Angell
5. She left school at 16 but discovered the first coronavirus in 1964. Name the person.
– Flossie Wong-Staal
– Dr Roselyn J. Eisenberg
– June Dalziel Almeida
5. June Dalziel Almeida