Questões de Inglês

Caffeine: The Silent Killer of Success

By Travis Bradberry, Ph.D.

September 08, 2014

Most people start drinking caffeine because it makes them feel more alert and improves their mood. Many studies suggest that caffeine actually improves cognitive task performance (memory, attention span, etc.) in the short-term. Unfortunately, these studies fail to consider the participants’ caffeine habits. New research from Johns Hopkins Medical School shows that performance increases due to caffeine intake is the result of caffeine drinkers experiencing a shortterm reversal of caffeine withdrawal.

By controlling for caffeine use in study participants, John Hopkins researchers found that caffeine-related performance improvement is nonexistent without caffeine withdrawal. In essence, coming off caffeine reduces your cognitive performance and has a negative impact on your mood. The only way to get back to normal is to drink caffeine, and when you do drink it, you feel like it’s taking you to new heights. In reality, the caffeine is just taking your performance back to normal for a short period.

The Bad: Adrenaline: Drinking caffeine triggers the release of adrenaline. Adrenaline is the source of the “fight or flight” response, a survival mechanism that forces you to stand up and fight or run for the hills when faced with a threat. The fight-or-flight mechanism sidesteps rational thinking in favor of a faster response. This is great when a bear is chasing you, but not so great when you’re responding to a curt email. When caffeine puts your brain and body into this hyper-aroused state, your emotions overrun your behavior. Irritability and anxiety are the most commonly seen emotional effects of caffeine, but caffeine enables all of your emotions to take charge. The negative effects of a caffeinegenerated adrenaline surge are not just behavioral. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University found that large doses of caffeine raise blood pressure, stimulate the heart, and produce rapid shallow breathing.

The Ugly: Sleep: Caffeine has a six-hour half-life, which means it takes a full twenty-four hours to work its way out of your system. Have a cup of coffee at eight a.m., and you’ll still have 25% of the caffeine in your body at eight p.m. Anything you drink after noon will still be at 50% strength at bedtime. Any caffeine in your bloodstream—with the negative effects increasing with the dose—makes it harder to fall asleep. When caffeine disrupts your sleep, you wake up the next day with an emotional handicap. You’re naturally going to be inclined to grab a cup of coffee or an energy drink to try to make yourself feel better.

Withdrawal: Like any stimulant, caffeine is physiologically and psychologically addictive. If you do choose to lower your caffeine intake, you should do so slowly under the guidance of a qualified medical professional. The researchers at Johns Hopkins found that caffeine withdrawal causes headache, fatigue, sleepiness, and difficulty concentrating. Some people report feeling flu-like symptoms, depression, and anxiety after reducing intake by as little as one cup a day. Slowly tapering your caffeine dosage each day can greatly reduce these withdrawal symptoms.

Disponível em: <https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20140908162020-50578967-caffeine-the-silent-killer-of-success> Acesso em:

10/09/2014, às 14h45min (fins pedagógicos – Adaptado).

Caffeine: The Silent Killer of Success

By Travis Bradberry, Ph.D.

September 08, 2014

Most people start drinking caffeine because it makes them feel more alert and improves their mood. Many studies suggest that caffeine actually improves cognitive task performance (memory, attention span, etc.) in the short-term. Unfortunately, these studies fail to consider the participants’ caffeine habits. New research from Johns Hopkins Medical School shows that performance increases due to caffeine intake is the result of caffeine drinkers experiencing a shortterm reversal of caffeine withdrawal.

By controlling for caffeine use in study participants, John Hopkins researchers found that caffeine-related performance improvement is nonexistent without caffeine withdrawal. In essence, coming off caffeine reduces your cognitive performance and has a negative impact on your mood. The only way to get back to normal is to drink caffeine, and when you do drink it, you feel like it’s taking you to new heights. In reality, the caffeine is just taking your performance back to normal for a short period.

The Bad: Adrenaline: Drinking caffeine triggers the release of adrenaline. Adrenaline is the source of the “fight or flight” response, a survival mechanism that forces you to stand up and fight or run for the hills when faced with a threat. The fight-or-flight mechanism sidesteps rational thinking in favor of a faster response. This is great when a bear is chasing you, but not so great when you’re responding to a curt email. When caffeine puts your brain and body into this hyper-aroused state, your emotions overrun your behavior. Irritability and anxiety are the most commonly seen emotional effects of caffeine, but caffeine enables all of your emotions to take charge. The negative effects of a caffeinegenerated adrenaline surge are not just behavioral. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University found that large doses of caffeine raise blood pressure, stimulate the heart, and produce rapid shallow breathing.

The Ugly: Sleep: Caffeine has a six-hour half-life, which means it takes a full twenty-four hours to work its way out of your system. Have a cup of coffee at eight a.m., and you’ll still have 25% of the caffeine in your body at eight p.m. Anything you drink after noon will still be at 50% strength at bedtime. Any caffeine in your bloodstream—with the negative effects increasing with the dose—makes it harder to fall asleep. When caffeine disrupts your sleep, you wake up the next day with an emotional handicap. You’re naturally going to be inclined to grab a cup of coffee or an energy drink to try to make yourself feel better.

Withdrawal: Like any stimulant, caffeine is physiologically and psychologically addictive. If you do choose to lower your caffeine intake, you should do so slowly under the guidance of a qualified medical professional. The researchers at Johns Hopkins found that caffeine withdrawal causes headache, fatigue, sleepiness, and difficulty concentrating. Some people report feeling flu-like symptoms, depression, and anxiety after reducing intake by as little as one cup a day. Slowly tapering your caffeine dosage each day can greatly reduce these withdrawal symptoms.

Disponível em: <https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20140908162020-50578967-caffeine-the-silent-killer-of-success> Acesso em:

10/09/2014, às 14h45min (fins pedagógicos – Adaptado).

Caffeine: The Silent Killer of Success

By Travis Bradberry, Ph.D.

September 08, 2014

Most people start drinking caffeine because it makes them feel more alert and improves their mood. Many studies suggest that caffeine actually improves cognitive task performance (memory, attention span, etc.) in the short-term. Unfortunately, these studies fail to consider the participants’ caffeine habits. New research from Johns Hopkins Medical School shows that performance increases due to caffeine intake is the result of caffeine drinkers experiencing a shortterm reversal of caffeine withdrawal.

By controlling for caffeine use in study participants, John Hopkins researchers found that caffeine-related performance improvement is nonexistent without caffeine withdrawal. In essence, coming off caffeine reduces your cognitive performance and has a negative impact on your mood. The only way to get back to normal is to drink caffeine, and when you do drink it, you feel like it’s taking you to new heights. In reality, the caffeine is just taking your performance back to normal for a short period.

The Bad: Adrenaline: Drinking caffeine triggers the release of adrenaline. Adrenaline is the source of the “fight or flight” response, a survival mechanism that forces you to stand up and fight or run for the hills when faced with a threat. The fight-or-flight mechanism sidesteps rational thinking in favor of a faster response. This is great when a bear is chasing you, but not so great when you’re responding to a curt email. When caffeine puts your brain and body into this hyper-aroused state, your emotions overrun your behavior. Irritability and anxiety are the most commonly seen emotional effects of caffeine, but caffeine enables all of your emotions to take charge. The negative effects of a caffeinegenerated adrenaline surge are not just behavioral. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University found that large doses of caffeine raise blood pressure, stimulate the heart, and produce rapid shallow breathing.

The Ugly: Sleep: Caffeine has a six-hour half-life, which means it takes a full twenty-four hours to work its way out of your system. Have a cup of coffee at eight a.m., and you’ll still have 25% of the caffeine in your body at eight p.m. Anything you drink after noon will still be at 50% strength at bedtime. Any caffeine in your bloodstream—with the negative effects increasing with the dose—makes it harder to fall asleep. When caffeine disrupts your sleep, you wake up the next day with an emotional handicap. You’re naturally going to be inclined to grab a cup of coffee or an energy drink to try to make yourself feel better.

Withdrawal: Like any stimulant, caffeine is physiologically and psychologically addictive. If you do choose to lower your caffeine intake, you should do so slowly under the guidance of a qualified medical professional. The researchers at Johns Hopkins found that caffeine withdrawal causes headache, fatigue, sleepiness, and difficulty concentrating. Some people report feeling flu-like symptoms, depression, and anxiety after reducing intake by as little as one cup a day. Slowly tapering your caffeine dosage each day can greatly reduce these withdrawal symptoms.

Disponível em: <https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20140908162020-50578967-caffeine-the-silent-killer-of-success> Acesso em:

10/09/2014, às 14h45min (fins pedagógicos – Adaptado).

Do screens make us stupider?

Time for a rethink of reading

At the university where I teach, fewer and fewer

new books are available from the library in their

physical, printed form. And yet, the company that just

published my textbook tells me that about 90 percent

[5] of students who buy my book choose to lug around

the four-pound paper version rather than purchase

the weightless e-book.

The information is exactly the same, so why would

students opt for the pricier and more cumbersome

[10] version? Is the library missing something important

about the nature of printed versus electronic books?

Some studies do show that information becomes

more securely fixed in people’s minds when they read

it from paper than when they read it from the screen.

[15] Findings like these may resonate with our subjective

experience of reading, and yet still seem puzzling at

an intellectual level. This is because we’re used to

thinking about reading—or information processing

more generally—as the metaphorical equivalent of

[20] consuming food. We talk about devouring novels,

digesting a report, and absorbing information. If we’re

ingesting the same material, whether it’s presented

in print or electronically, how can the results be so

different?

[25] Within the prevailing food metaphor, the only

sensible way to think about these different outcomes

is that reading from paper leads to more efficient or

complete digestion. An intuitive explanation may

be that visual fatigue or the effort of navigating text

[30] onscreen interferes with the processing of information.

Or perhaps we’ve picked up shallow mental habits

while onscreen that prevent us from taking the time

to properly chew on the information as we take it

in. In both cases, the implication is that valuable

[35] informational nutrients that are “there” in the text end

up being mentally excreted rather than absorbed.

But, in reality, the whole reading-as-digestion

metaphor is deeply flawed. Cognitive research shows

that while reading, it’s possible, among other things,

[40] to generate strong visual images based on the text, to

marshal arguments against the author’s main point,

to speculate about the motivations of characters, to

connect the text to personal experiences, to form

an opinion, or to notice the sensory and aesthetic

[45] qualities of the text, to name just a few. Not all of

these take place every time you read, so there is not

just one activity called “reading,” done either poorly

or well.

There are probably all sorts of subtle cues

[50] around us, influencing our cognitive goals moment

by moment. A study showed that when people read

a product review in a hard-to-read font, they more

carefully evaluated the merits of the arguments than

when the same information was presented in easyto-

[55] read font—suggesting that when information

merely feels hard to process, we automatically bring

out the heavy cognitive machinery. The emerging

research on cognitive goals and their triggers offers

an intriguing way to think about why reading the same

[60] text in different formats or even styles of presentation

might engage the mind in such different ways. A

hard-copy textbook may serve as a powerful cue that

sets off cognitive activities that are very distinct from

those that are involved in reading your Twitter feed or

[65] thumbing through a paperback romance novel.

The research should also motivate publishers—

especially of online text—to think deeply about how

elements of presentation and design can serve as

signals to nudge the reader into the mental activities

[70] that do justice to the text. For example, an online

literary magazine may leave readers with unsatisfying

experiences simply because it’s too hard to arouse

the contemplative and sensory goals that lead to

properly savoring its content. The magazine needs

[75] to signal that a different kind of reading is called for,

perhaps by borrowing some of the elements that

poets have long used to cue readers to pay close

attention to the language of a poem: stripping away

graphic distractions, formatting text sparsely and

[80] unconventionally, and surrounding it with generous

swaths of empty space.

Understanding how reading works means

abandoning the idea that the presentation of a text

is as inconsequential as whether a plate of food is

[85] served with a sprig of decorative parsley. In fact,

the packaging of text likely contains rich implicit

instructions for what we do with it.

Available at: <http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2014/06/17/do- -screens-make-us-stupider-time-for-a-rethink-of-reading/>. Retrieved on: July 10th, 2014. Adapted.

Do screens make us stupider?

Time for a rethink of reading

At the university where I teach, fewer and fewer

new books are available from the library in their

physical, printed form. And yet, the company that just

published my textbook tells me that about 90 percent

[5] of students who buy my book choose to lug around

the four-pound paper version rather than purchase

the weightless e-book.

The information is exactly the same, so why would

students opt for the pricier and more cumbersome

[10] version? Is the library missing something important

about the nature of printed versus electronic books?

Some studies do show that information becomes

more securely fixed in people’s minds when they read

it from paper than when they read it from the screen.

[15] Findings like these may resonate with our subjective

experience of reading, and yet still seem puzzling at

an intellectual level. This is because we’re used to

thinking about reading—or information processing

more generally—as the metaphorical equivalent of

[20] consuming food. We talk about devouring novels,

digesting a report, and absorbing information. If we’re

ingesting the same material, whether it’s presented

in print or electronically, how can the results be so

different?

[25] Within the prevailing food metaphor, the only

sensible way to think about these different outcomes

is that reading from paper leads to more efficient or

complete digestion. An intuitive explanation may

be that visual fatigue or the effort of navigating text

[30] onscreen interferes with the processing of information.

Or perhaps we’ve picked up shallow mental habits

while onscreen that prevent us from taking the time

to properly chew on the information as we take it

in. In both cases, the implication is that valuable

[35] informational nutrients that are “there” in the text end

up being mentally excreted rather than absorbed.

But, in reality, the whole reading-as-digestion

metaphor is deeply flawed. Cognitive research shows

that while reading, it’s possible, among other things,

[40] to generate strong visual images based on the text, to

marshal arguments against the author’s main point,

to speculate about the motivations of characters, to

connect the text to personal experiences, to form

an opinion, or to notice the sensory and aesthetic

[45] qualities of the text, to name just a few. Not all of

these take place every time you read, so there is not

just one activity called “reading,” done either poorly

or well.

There are probably all sorts of subtle cues

[50] around us, influencing our cognitive goals moment

by moment. A study showed that when people read

a product review in a hard-to-read font, they more

carefully evaluated the merits of the arguments than

when the same information was presented in easyto-

[55] read font—suggesting that when information

merely feels hard to process, we automatically bring

out the heavy cognitive machinery. The emerging

research on cognitive goals and their triggers offers

an intriguing way to think about why reading the same

[60] text in different formats or even styles of presentation

might engage the mind in such different ways. A

hard-copy textbook may serve as a powerful cue that

sets off cognitive activities that are very distinct from

those that are involved in reading your Twitter feed or

[65] thumbing through a paperback romance novel.

The research should also motivate publishers—

especially of online text—to think deeply about how

elements of presentation and design can serve as

signals to nudge the reader into the mental activities

[70] that do justice to the text. For example, an online

literary magazine may leave readers with unsatisfying

experiences simply because it’s too hard to arouse

the contemplative and sensory goals that lead to

properly savoring its content. The magazine needs

[75] to signal that a different kind of reading is called for,

perhaps by borrowing some of the elements that

poets have long used to cue readers to pay close

attention to the language of a poem: stripping away

graphic distractions, formatting text sparsely and

[80] unconventionally, and surrounding it with generous

swaths of empty space.

Understanding how reading works means

abandoning the idea that the presentation of a text

is as inconsequential as whether a plate of food is

[85] served with a sprig of decorative parsley. In fact,

the packaging of text likely contains rich implicit

instructions for what we do with it.

Available at: <http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2014/06/17/do- -screens-make-us-stupider-time-for-a-rethink-of-reading/>. Retrieved on: July 10th, 2014. Adapted.

Do screens make us stupider?

Time for a rethink of reading

At the university where I teach, fewer and fewer

new books are available from the library in their

physical, printed form. And yet, the company that just

published my textbook tells me that about 90 percent

[5] of students who buy my book choose to lug around

the four-pound paper version rather than purchase

the weightless e-book.

The information is exactly the same, so why would

students opt for the pricier and more cumbersome

[10] version? Is the library missing something important

about the nature of printed versus electronic books?

Some studies do show that information becomes

more securely fixed in people’s minds when they read

it from paper than when they read it from the screen.

[15] Findings like these may resonate with our subjective

experience of reading, and yet still seem puzzling at

an intellectual level. This is because we’re used to

thinking about reading—or information processing

more generally—as the metaphorical equivalent of

[20] consuming food. We talk about devouring novels,

digesting a report, and absorbing information. If we’re

ingesting the same material, whether it’s presented

in print or electronically, how can the results be so

different?

[25] Within the prevailing food metaphor, the only

sensible way to think about these different outcomes

is that reading from paper leads to more efficient or

complete digestion. An intuitive explanation may

be that visual fatigue or the effort of navigating text

[30] onscreen interferes with the processing of information.

Or perhaps we’ve picked up shallow mental habits

while onscreen that prevent us from taking the time

to properly chew on the information as we take it

in. In both cases, the implication is that valuable

[35] informational nutrients that are “there” in the text end

up being mentally excreted rather than absorbed.

But, in reality, the whole reading-as-digestion

metaphor is deeply flawed. Cognitive research shows

that while reading, it’s possible, among other things,

[40] to generate strong visual images based on the text, to

marshal arguments against the author’s main point,

to speculate about the motivations of characters, to

connect the text to personal experiences, to form

an opinion, or to notice the sensory and aesthetic

[45] qualities of the text, to name just a few. Not all of

these take place every time you read, so there is not

just one activity called “reading,” done either poorly

or well.

There are probably all sorts of subtle cues

[50] around us, influencing our cognitive goals moment

by moment. A study showed that when people read

a product review in a hard-to-read font, they more

carefully evaluated the merits of the arguments than

when the same information was presented in easyto-

[55] read font—suggesting that when information

merely feels hard to process, we automatically bring

out the heavy cognitive machinery. The emerging

research on cognitive goals and their triggers offers

an intriguing way to think about why reading the same

[60] text in different formats or even styles of presentation

might engage the mind in such different ways. A

hard-copy textbook may serve as a powerful cue that

sets off cognitive activities that are very distinct from

those that are involved in reading your Twitter feed or

[65] thumbing through a paperback romance novel.

The research should also motivate publishers—

especially of online text—to think deeply about how

elements of presentation and design can serve as

signals to nudge the reader into the mental activities

[70] that do justice to the text. For example, an online

literary magazine may leave readers with unsatisfying

experiences simply because it’s too hard to arouse

the contemplative and sensory goals that lead to

properly savoring its content. The magazine needs

[75] to signal that a different kind of reading is called for,

perhaps by borrowing some of the elements that

poets have long used to cue readers to pay close

attention to the language of a poem: stripping away

graphic distractions, formatting text sparsely and

[80] unconventionally, and surrounding it with generous

swaths of empty space.

Understanding how reading works means

abandoning the idea that the presentation of a text

is as inconsequential as whether a plate of food is

[85] served with a sprig of decorative parsley. In fact,

the packaging of text likely contains rich implicit

instructions for what we do with it.

Available at: . Retrieved on: July 10th, 2014. Adapted.