Minding The Gaps Article Analysis

Los Angeles Times writer Melissa Healy, in her article Minding the gaps (August 30, 2010), uses scientific credibility and logic in creating her argument to appeal to the audience's emotions and feelings about their own mental processes. Healy declared that small mental lapses between tasks or daydreaming are for brain development and social cue absorption, and not a sign of onset mental degradation. The author’s purpose is to incite self-awareness and self-appreciation of neuroanatomy within her local community, to help them understand that it is not actually a negative thing, but a positive way for the brain to perceive social cues subconsciously from the busy environment around them. For this article, the argument is engineered towards Healy’s local Los Angeles community or anyone who may be interested in a general topic of neuroscience. Healy encourages this audience to feel more positive about themselves while proving an understanding of general neuroscience and how it may affect them in their immediate lives. Throughout her complete argument, Healy establishes an educational, yet relatively informal tone. The author establishes credibility early on with the audience - the vocabulary and syntax chosen allowed it to be acknowledged by a larger audience.

Healy makes a connection to the audience through their emotions by making them feel united; all humans have brains and all of our brains cope using the “neutral” setting. By connecting to her audience on a humankind level, the audience can shape Healy’s argument around their unique lives and experiences. This work included multiple anecdotes and examples from scientists themselves. However, by representing these scientific facts in a universally generic way, more people are likely to read and appreciate Healy’s argument. Healy provided neurologic and other scientific studies or experiments to specifically provide factual evidence to her claim. While she already established the credibility of her argument through scientific analysis, Healy must also dissect those experiments to provide evidence for her argument.