Week Two: diving into the books

I have spent this week reading literature that I couldn’t have easily accessed before with the help of Doctor Knox. It has been very helpful as I have been exposing myself to a number of studies, all vast in scope application methodology and goal. For example, a study by Henry H. Wilmer, Lauren E. Sherman, and Jason M. Chein. Focused on the usage of chronic smartphone usage correlated to healthy lifestyle decisions. This study was completed through many parameters and metrics such as height and weight tracking, information on the subjects economic background, parental education, and frequency of activity. This study in particular got me intrigued and made me consider the following. Practically, is there any limit to the increasingly broadening scope of individuals negatively affected by persistent smartphone over-use? The findings suggested a meaningful relationship between screen time and broader behavioral patterns, which only deepened my curiosity about how far-reaching these effects truly are across different demographic groups and age ranges. Related to the structure of my assessment of BASIS students, these new studies have given me new reliable and even more time efficient testing methods for different types of memory, helping solve one of my more concerning problems with this project, the time the assessment would take. Another reliable tool for testing which would eliminate the bias against students who are worse at reading comprehension, if we directly test short term memory of specific words, patterns, and reaction time we can gain the specific metrics we need in order to score subjects according to their level of short term recollection capabilities, then we can see if their abilities are impaired by a cellular device. That is all for now, until next week.