By: Diane Swanbrow, U-M News Service
Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Ybarra and Burnstein research highlighted in News Service press release

From the release:

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Spending just 10 minutes talking to another person can help improve your memory and your performance on tests, according to a University of Michigan study to be published in the February 2008 issue of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

"In our study, socializing was just as effective as more traditional kinds of mental exercise in boosting memory and intellectual performance," said Oscar Ybarra, a psychologist at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR) and a lead author of the study with ISR psychologist Eugene Burnstein and psychologist Piotr Winkielman from the University of California, San Diego.

In the article, Ybarra, Burnstein and colleagues report on findings from two types of studies they conducted on the relationship between social interactions and mental functioning.

Their research was funded in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation....

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To read the entire article and listen to the podcast, visit: http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=6137.