Investigating the Effect of Discomfort on Reaction Time
Investigating the effect of discomfort on reaction time
Purpose and method
The purpose of this investigation was to investigate the effect of discomfort on reaction time in humans, measured by dropping a ruler into a subject’s hand. Discomfort was caused by a bowl of ice.
Background information
Information is carried from the sensory receptors to the central nervous system and back the to effectors by means of nerves. When a number of different processes are involved (a situation informally known as multitasking, research has shown that the brain tends to split to deal the different parts to carry out the tasks. The topic of interest is how having two problems to solve affects the speed of the brain in carrying out these tasks, and this will be tested by testing reaction time, or mental chronometry.
Hypothesis
The hypothesis is that when the subject is experiencing discomfort they will be likely to take longer to catch the ruler. This is because, according to my background information, the brain will have fewer resources to put at its disposal as its attention will be split and this will result in slower reactions.
Variables
The independent variable is the presence or absence of the cause of discomfort; in this experiment, ice. Due to the polar nature of the variable no error is associated with it.
The dependent variable is the distance in millimetres of ruler that passes through the subject’s hand before it was caught. It has an error of ±0.5 mm.
Below is a list of controlled variables.
Variable | Method of control | Amount of ice | Variation in the amount of ice would lead to different amounts of discomfort, so this was kept the same for each subject. | Age of the subject | Age would naturally affect reaction time as older people are known to be less agile, so all of the subjects were the same age, 17 years. | Dominant hand of subject | All subjects were right-hand dominant. | Amount of time hand kept under ice | Variation
Purpose and method
The purpose of this investigation was to investigate the effect of discomfort on reaction time in humans, measured by dropping a ruler into a subject’s hand. Discomfort was caused by a bowl of ice.
Background information
Information is carried from the sensory receptors to the central nervous system and back the to effectors by means of nerves. When a number of different processes are involved (a situation informally known as multitasking, research has shown that the brain tends to split to deal the different parts to carry out the tasks. The topic of interest is how having two problems to solve affects the speed of the brain in carrying out these tasks, and this will be tested by testing reaction time, or mental chronometry.
Hypothesis
The hypothesis is that when the subject is experiencing discomfort they will be likely to take longer to catch the ruler. This is because, according to my background information, the brain will have fewer resources to put at its disposal as its attention will be split and this will result in slower reactions.
Variables
The independent variable is the presence or absence of the cause of discomfort; in this experiment, ice. Due to the polar nature of the variable no error is associated with it.
The dependent variable is the distance in millimetres of ruler that passes through the subject’s hand before it was caught. It has an error of ±0.5 mm.
Below is a list of controlled variables.
Variable | Method of control | Amount of ice | Variation in the amount of ice would lead to different amounts of discomfort, so this was kept the same for each subject. | Age of the subject | Age would naturally affect reaction time as older people are known to be less agile, so all of the subjects were the same age, 17 years. | Dominant hand of subject | All subjects were right-hand dominant. | Amount of time hand kept under ice | Variation