When I was younger the idea of gum chewing helping test performance was introduced to me. I was skeptical on the idea but as a middle-schooler, what did I know? Now that I am capable of understanding this question I decided to do a little research on it.

There was a study conducted that used 224 undergraduates from St. Lawrence University. They divided the subjects into groups. There were two experimental groups, one group chewed gum before and during the test, one group chewed gum for five minutes before the test and the control group did not chew gum. This study was a randomized experiment but it was not a double-blind study seeing as the subjects would know if they were chewing gum or not. The results found that the group that chewed the gum five minutes before had the best test performance. I found these results to be interesting. The fact that chewing gum “gets the brain moving” this phenomenon is known as “mastication-induced arousal.” This arousal is said to get more blood flowing to the head and increase heart rate and blood pressure. This study shows that there is a correlation between the two variables (chewing gum and test performance.) But correlation does not mean causation. Although we can rule out confounding variables and reverse causation due to the x-variable being manipulated. We can never rule out chance. Because this is a randomized experiment we must question the experimental design and the relevance/generalisability. We receive better results when the experiment conducted is a double-blind study. That is impossible in this case. One question that was brought up in the study, we the test subjects thinking harder because they knew they were expected to have the higher test results? The scientist conducting this study (Onyper), said, “In real-world situations the chewing might be more unconscious, automated, in which case it would take up very little cognitive resources and probably not affect performance much.”

So should we chew gum before a test but spit it out before the test actually begins? The study showed that there was a correlation between the two variables. With that being said, we can reject the null hypothesis (that there is no relationship between the two variables). This conclusion could also be a false positive if there is not actually a relationship between the two variables. There is not enough statistically significant information to prove whether or not chewing gum actually makes a big enough effect on test performance. I think knowing the results of this study, if I were to chew gum before I would perform better on a test knowing that it was expected of me. In my opinion, they would have to conduct this experiment on subjects that have never heard of this correlation to receive better results overall. This experiment does not face the file drawer problem seeing that there are studies published on it. It also does not face the Texas sharp-shooter problem because they are only testing one thing, not multiple things and just coming across an answer by pure luck or chance.

References:

http://www.nbcnews.com/feature/education-nation/commentary-chewing-gum-may-improve-test-scores-n21731

http://www.livescience.com/17520-chewing-gum-test-performance.html