Having trouble remembering phone numbers or a professor's
lecture? Try spitting out your chewing gum. A new British study
suggests that chewing flavorless gum can interfere with short-
term memory. The research, published in The Quarterly Journal of
Experimental Psychology, challenges the prevailing notion that
chewing gum — at least when it's flavored — is a performance
enhancer that can boost brain power. It also provides further
proof that human beings are woefully inept at completing two
tasks at once. Some argue that gum improves concentration by
triggering an increase in blood flow through the brain, said
lead author Michail Kozlov of Cardiff University. But his team
found that an oral activity such as gum chewing can interfere
with the process that's normally used to remember verbal
content. The researchers from Cardiff University used classic
short-term memory challenges, with and without gum. In one test,
the volunteers were told to chew vigorously and asked to
remember a sequence of randomly ordered