Chewing Gum Lab

843 Words2 Pages

Purpose The purpose of this experiment is to examine whether chewing spearmint flavored gum increases the number of words remembered from a list. Previous research has found that gum chewing has an effect on cognitive functions, including attention and memory. Multiple studies suggest that gum chewing has no effects on memory, while other studies suggest gum chewing has an effect on both memory and attention. Background Serge, Onyper, Carr, Farrar and Floyd (2011) reviewed the effects of the timing of gum chewing on cognitive function. They administered different cognitive tasks to participants who chewed gum either before or throughout testing. They then compared the participants performance to the control group, who did not chew gum at all. Chewing gum showed to have an association with the performance of cognitive tasks. If gum was chewed 5 minutes before cognitive testing, the performance was greater than those who chewed gum during testing. The benefits of gum chewing also persisted for about 15-20 minutes of the testing session. In conclusion, researchers …show more content…

Golding and Prevost (2009) examined the effect of chewing gum on memory when the flavor is held constant. They had participants complete a word recall task. During the learning and the recall stages, participants either chewed a piece of gum or they sucked on a sweet candy. Results found that performance of recall was not improved by oral activity. Tucha, Mecklinger, Maier, Hammerl and Lange (2004) tested the effect of chewing gum on cognitive function, memory and other attentional functions. Participants were randomly assigned to four different groups; no chewing, mimicking chewing movement, chewing a piece of tasteless gum and chewing a piece of spearmint flavored gum. The results showed that chewing gum did not improve participants memory function, but chewing did effect different attention aspects. Participants maintained attention, but alertness was negatively influenced by gum

Open Document