
Wythe Whiting
Professor of Cognitive and Behavioral Science, Washington and Lee University
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- 2024-2025: How We Live and Die: Stories, Values, and Communities
- 2023-2024: Ethics of Design
- 2022-2023: Beneficence: Practicing an Ethics of Care
- 2021-2022: Daily Ethics: How Individual Choices and Habits Express Our Values and Shape Our World
- 2020-2021: Global Ethics in the 21st Century: Challenges and Opportunities
- 2019-2020: The Ethics of Technology
- 2018-2019: The Ethics of Identity
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- 2014-2015: Race and Justice in America
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Talk Title: The New Appendage: Cellphones in Cognitive and Behavioral Context
Co-Presenter: Karla Murdock
Thursday, February 6, 2020, 5:00 pm, Stackhouse Theater

Wythe Whiting
Prof. Whiting’s early work explained cognitive declines with advancing age as a function of neural noise and broken circuitry. He has also examined older adults’ difficulties in perceiving basic emotions in facial expressions. His more recent work has focused on the physiological and behavioral consequences of a digital environment on our ability to sustain attention. His recent collaborations with Dr. Karla Murdock have uncovered negative relationships between smart phone use and both sleep quality and attentional performance (Cognitive Processing, 2016). Their most recent study (under review) has shown that teenagers are particularly distracted by smartphone notifications, exhibiting greater attentional lapses and heart rate variability increases relative to adults. Prof. Whiting’s future work will continue to explore the incompatibility of our analog brains with the digital world.
Prof. Whiting’s work can be found in peer-reviewed journals including Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience; Psychology and Aging; Cognitive Processing; Aging, Neuroscience and Cognition; Cerebral Cortex; and NeuroImage.
- About the Mudd Center
- People
-
Programs and Events
- 2024-2025: How We Live and Die: Stories, Values, and Communities
- 2023-2024: Ethics of Design
- 2022-2023: Beneficence: Practicing an Ethics of Care
- 2021-2022: Daily Ethics: How Individual Choices and Habits Express Our Values and Shape Our World
- 2020-2021: Global Ethics in the 21st Century: Challenges and Opportunities
- 2019-2020: The Ethics of Technology
- 2018-2019: The Ethics of Identity
- 2017-2018: Equality and Difference
- 2016-2017: Markets and Morals
- 2015-2016: The Ethics of Citizenship
- 2014-2015: Race and Justice in America
- Leadership Lab
- Mudd Undergraduate Journal of Ethics
- Highlights
- Mudd Center Fellows Program
- Get Involved
The Mudd Center
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Washington and Lee University
209 Mattingly House
Lexington, VA 24450