Kids Swear They are Older

Statistical evidence indicate that a vast majority of pre-teen Americans tend to actively seek informal learning channels to expand their vocabulary of expletives. It has been observed that the growth rate in this section of the pre-teen's vocabulary happens at a pace which is significantly higher than that of overall vocabulary and is often times unrelated to presence or absence of learning disorder in the subject.

Researchers in the the Truism Development Lab (TDL), University of Obvious have been working since 2005 applying psychometric analyses with advanced neural net algorithms to identify patterns in teen behaviour captured through expertly designed surveys. These groundbreaking techniques have been able to minimize dependence anecdotal evidence.

Prof. {white-ish name} the founder of TDL and research scientists {Indian Name} and {Chinese Name} made waves with their article: Evolution of nefarious vocabularic tendencies in pre-teens. in the recent issue of Journal of {I exist so assistant profs. can publish and get tenured}. The survey conducted on 31 pre-teen subjects in the high school across the street from TDL - which {Chinese name} explains is a representative cross section of America, helped affirm many traditionally held theories.

The article puts forward the theory that many pre-teens tend to start 'cussing' in a conscious effort to appear older. This tendency was also inversely proportional to the extent of time spent in the country. "Immigrant children tend to make that extra effort to work in cuss words into their vocabulary. Apart from the motivation to appear older, they are also driven by the drive to "fit in" with their peers" said Dr. {Chinese name} drawing from personal experience.

Cuss words specific to certain ethnic groups tend to be picked up first by the children. "Of course this is because of the increased probability of hearing them more in the household. But apart from that it is also because it provides the opportunity of being able to cuss but make sense only to a specific group." says Dr.{Indian Name}.

In response to the criticism that some of the research conclusions were obvious Dr. {white name} said it was important to further social understanding by accurately quantifying and proving beyond doubt, that publicly held notions were indeed on the right basis. "Isn't it amazing that conclusions drawn from closeted individual cases- fraught with risks of personal bias- indeed turn out to be correct? Speaks volumes about the human intuition and common sense".

Dr {White name} also said that this intuition and the psychological underpinnings of social understanding was still a matter of open research. TDL is expanding to a Neural mapping facilities in early 2009 that will take research to a new level. "Neurosociology is surely the technology of the future" say all three in chorus. TDL's founder-professor is smug walking into the future looking ahead. As Dr.{Indian name} puts it in Hindi -"sAlA yEda hai" - which loosely translates to "he is indeed a visionary".

PS: This is tet another recycled text foisted upon you unsuspecting readers. I wrote this some time back after reading a pretty lame magazine article about some inane 'research': a paper that did a bunch of regressions to prove that kids take up smoking to appear older. Duh!
PPS: Got reminded about it when reading this via mislexic today.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Will KamalHassan apologise for Mahanadhi ?

Judex Ergo Sum

Kamal - the writer/director