Humans
Music keeps the mind sharp, plus chimp self-recognition, bullying's bodily effects and more in this week's news
By Science News
First-person memorable
Those who speak first remember best — at least according to their comrades. In three experiments, participants who had watched videotaped events heard differing versions of the incidents from two others. Volunteers believed the first speaker more than the second and more often agreed with the first speaker’s account even if they knew that the observers spoke in random order, say psychologists Daniel Wright and Marianna Carlucci of Florida International University in Miami. People often collaborate in groups to remember events and may rightly assume that the first one to voice a memory tends to be accurate, the researchers will propose in
Psychonomic Bulletin and Review
. —