Reading on a Smartphone, and Sighing

If you are reading this on a smartphone, please monitor your sighing activity. As you read, and as you sigh, consider the details presented in the following study: “Reading on a Smartphone Affects Sigh Generation, Brain Activity, and Comprehension,” Motoyasu Honma, Yuri Masaoka, Natsuko Iizuka, Sayaka Wada, Sawa Kamimura, Akira Yoshikawa, Rika Moriya, Shotaro Kamijo, […]

Sighing: Neurobiologists hasten to catch up with psychologists

Psychologists, having been decorated (see below) for pursuing insights about why people sigh, now see neurobiologists tailing after them. A press release earlier this year from UCLA announces: “UCLA and Stanford researchers pinpoint origin of sighing reflex in the brain“. The press release also contains a body of text, which contains this explanation: “Sighing appears to be […]

The progress of a sigh

Research on sighing continues, perhaps spurred on by the awarding of the 2012 Ig Nobel Prize in psychology to Karl Halvor Teigen (of the University of Oslo), for trying to understand why, in everyday life, people sigh. Professor Teigen’s prize-winning study (“Is a Sigh ‘Just a Sigh’? Sighs as Emotional Signals and Responses to a Difficult Task,” […]