Slowest Reaction Time

Reaction time is a key component to staying safe while driving, or even walking. The data from this experiment tells us that peripheral vision causes us to have the slowest reaction time. For example, the average place I caught the ruler when it was in my peripheral vision was at 24.12 cm. During the peripheral trials, I didn’t catch the ruler two out of the three times, that being the only distraction where I didn’t catch the ruler. The next slowest reaction time measured at 16.45 cm (conversation distraction) which is 7.67 cm less than peripheral vision. That’s more than the range between the fastest reaction time and the second slowest reaction time at 4.9 cm (fatigue)! You can clearly tell that peripheral vision is an outlier in this experiment. From this data we can see that if something is just inside our peripheral vision, we have a slower reaction time than the other distractions.

Personally, I think I didn’t do that well with the peripheral vision factor because I don’t have to

For example, when we are driving we not only have to look at the car in front of us, we have to look at the cars on the sides of us in our peripheral vision. If one of those cars in our peripheral vision jerks out, we need to have a fast reaction time. Having strong peripheral vision also allows us to do better in sports and causes less injuries.

There are many factors that influence reaction time that we did not explore in class. Measuring data for this experiment took two classes on two separate days which may have skewed the data. For example, did I get the same amount of sleep on both days? This might have influenced my reaction time because if I didn’t get the same amount of sleep on one of the days, my reaction time might have been slower.

From this experiment, we can pull out other questions to answer. For example, how does the amount of sleep you get influence reaction time? How strong is your peripheral