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Alberto Pizzoli / AFP - Getty Images file
Let this be a lesson to us: A good dose of caffeine may improve editing.
You probably count on your daily jolt of caffeine to wake up your brain and stay sharp all day long. But downing that coffee, tea, cola, or chocolate bar may be giving you a leg up in another unexpected way: It can improve your proofreading skills, according to a new study.
Caffeine seems to enhance performance of some of the brain's complex processes that rely on the right hemisphere, such as extracting meaning from language that's written or spoken, says study author Tad Brunye, a senior cognitive scientist at the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center in Natick, Mass. "And you don't need excessively large doses to do so," he explains.
In the study, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, researchers asked 36 college students who consumed low levels of caffeine -- about a half-cup of coffee a day -- to do a "language task." The students were given 5 minutes to read a one-page news story, and needed to identify and correct as many spelling and grammatical mistakes as they found in that time.
Forty-five minutes before taking the proofreading test, students were randomly given a capsule containing one of four doses of caffeine: none, 100 milligrams (the amount found in 8-ounces brewed coffee), 200 milligrams (found in 16-ounces coffee), or 400 milligrams (found in 20-ounces of coffee).
In a second study, researchers repeated the same experiment with 38 college students who consumed higher levels of caffeine each day. The java junkies typically had at least 300 milligrams of caffeine daily, roughly three 8-ounce cups of joe.
Caffeine only seemed to make a difference in the student's ability to spot and fix "complex global errors." These were mistakes in subject-and-verb agreement (for example, billionaire inventor Tony Stark enjoy a lavish lifestyle) and verb tense (for example, customers were misled into believing they had got approved for low interest loans).
The low-caffeine crowd was best at finding and correcting these grammatical goofs at 200 milligrams of caffeine. But it took more in the highly caffeinated -- 400 milligrams -- to achieve the highest detection rates.
Interestingly, caffeine didn't affect the students' skill at finding and correcting misspelled words. And it had no effect on noticing mistakes in words that sound alike, such as weather and whether or seams and seems.
"Individuals who habitually consume caffeine on a daily basis are less likely to benefit from caffeine's performance advantages without upping the dose," Brunye says.
So if you're great at finding the grammatical mistakes that occasionally occur in Body Odd posts, we'll assume your caffeine has kicked in.
Related:
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- Too much coffee makes you hear voices
- Coffee and doughnuts may give a brain boost
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Leave a Comment:
I'm buzzing so hard on coffee right now I could only read this article in chunks. Didn't see any errors though!
If there are 100 mg caffeine in 8 oz, 200 mg in 16 oz, there would be 400 mg in 32 oz (NOT 20 oz)--20 oz of coffee would have 250 mg......seriously? The proofreaders at MSNBC should have had their coffee....(not sure if 20 oz or 32 oz?) Hahahahahahaha!
Darn! You beat me to it!
Yeah me too. I did the math as I was reading because I couldn't help myself. Then I wondered why the editor didn't bother. I agree osuguy - coffee all around for everyone at MSNBC.
By the way coffee is amazing! According to MSNBC it makes you smarter, it prevents alzheimers, and if you get a big enough cup, it even raises your status in society! LOL. Good thing I down about 48 oz a day!
I'm not surprised that college kids couldn't spot spelling errors or identify mistakes with homophones.
Online comments show many don't know (or don't care) about the difference between there/their/they're, it's/its, your/you're, accept/except, affect/effect, lose/loose, to/too, etc.
And it seems to be too late to reverse the course of American speech & writing errors such as she/her, and he/him, along with pluralizing verb matches with "none" and not knowing when or where one should use an apostrophe. These mistakes are beginning to look and sound correct because they're made so frequently.
Coffee can't fix ignorance.
Coffee can't fix uptight grammar nazis either.
Don't read any Jane Austen, ttmadison, she'll give you fits with her use of the singular "they."
I've got a great book on Errors in Common English from the 1800s--and, sweetie, all your examples are there. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
PS Sometimes, in American English, we use a pluralized verb with the pronoun "none." Grammar Girl said it this way:
I'm fairly sure that lose & loose are not homophones. Yes, people frequently mix them up, but they don't sound the same. Unless you have a lisp.
The number of mistakes I see on MSNBC daily proves this.
If one is past high school and finds themselves to be deficient in writing skills, the most efficient way to gain these skills is to go to a city college and sign up for the freshman core of english classes, usually two classes.
This may seem like a waste of time to some, but this is not about committing to a degree or certificate program. It is just about acquiring useful, but pertinent skills. And of course, all english classes are available online now, but for the basic writing skills, most colleges number those courses as 101 and 102.
For those with no $, it might be possible to attend esl (english as a second language) classes, even if one is a native english speaker. This would depend upon the instructor, but this should be kept in mind because these classes are free in many areas.
I'm sure that some people will think this should not be mentioned, but years ago (1980's I believe) the magazine 'Psychology Today' reported on some scientific studies that measured accuracy at various editing and arithmetic tasks with subjects under the effect of various chemical substances (or not). One result was that a moderate dose of cocaine significantly improved average performance of basic arithmetic tasks (addition, subtraction, multiplication, etc) and also improved editing ability (finding errors in written material). The study did point out that the improvement was only in fairly simple tasks, and that related testing had never shown that cocaine improved the ability to understand higher-level, conceptual material. I think that larger doses of cocaine were also found to interfere with performance to some extent.
I've always thought that this may explain the fact the moderate doses of amphetamines (for ADD/ADHD) seem to improve academic performance of many kids in school (...like duh!).
psycho-spella-grammarism - whut's tha' 'bout? t's silly - it's the message that is important - convey that clearly an' yer done. t'rest is a stupid pet trick foisted on ye by layabouts who'd rather toss off than toss caber in fair competition - set of git-rules t'weasel yer minde. language is dynamic - rules apparently less so. Nobles an' clerics created tha' mess - let thum wallow in't.
I am one of those dreaded college students, but I actually enjoy grammar and writing. I can't even read or understand Parsifal's post. Some who comment need to not make such generalizations about a population as a whole.