A team of US psychologists（心理学家）have found that talking to another person for ten minutes a day helps with memory.

“Socializing（交际）is just as useful as more traditional kinds of mental（脑力的）exercises in boosting memory and intellectual performance,” Oscar Ybarra, a psychologist at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research, said in a statement.

In one investigation（调查）, they analyzed data on 3610 people, aged 24 to 96.

They find that the higher their level of social interaction（交流）, the better their cognitive（认知的）functioning. Social interaction includes getting together or having phone chats with relatives, friends and neighbors.

In another experiment, the researchers conducted laboratory tests on 76 college students, aged 18 to 21, to evaluate（评估）how social interactions and mental exercises influenced the results of memory and intellectual performance tests.

The students were divided into three groups：the social interaction group had a discussion of a social issue for 10 minutes before taking the tests; the mental activities group completed three tasks（including a reading comprehension exercise and a crossword puzzle）before the tests; and a control group（对照组）watched a 10-minute film of the Seinfeld television show.

“We found that short-term social interaction lasting for just 10 minutes improved the students’ intellectual performance as much as working on so-called ‘mental’ activities for the same amount of time,” Ybarra said.

The study was expected to be published in the February issue of the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

One day Mr. Smith went to a dinner party. He was wearing very old clothes. He came into the room, but people in the room didn’t look at him. They didn’t ask him to sit at the table. He wasn’t happy. But he said nothing.

Mr. Smith went home quickly and put on his best clothes. He went back to the party. Everyone in the room stood up and looked at him. They gave him good food to eat.

Mr. Smith took off his coat, put it on the food and said, “Eat, coat!”

The other people were surprised and asked, “What are you doing? Why do you do that?”

Mr. Smith answered, “I am asking my coat to eat food. When I wore old clothes, you didn’t look at me. You didn’t ask me to sit down. Now I am wearing these nice clothes. And you give me good food. Now I see, not to me.”