Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

The project I am doing is "Does Cellphone Conversation Affect Reaction Time?"
This is an awesome project but I want to make it more advanced...
IDEAS?

Maybe you could try adding a few more test conditions to see what other activities might be distracting enough to change reaction time. For example, have your participant send a text message with one hand while testing reaction time using the ruler drop method. Or have the participant listen to different types of music, a talk-based podcast, etc. Maybe you could have them put on makeup or eat a bag of chips! Anything you can think of that someone might be doing in a car while driving!

That would be a good idea, but I feel like it would just add more time to the project, rather than making it more advanced, you know?

Hello,

Tell us in what ways you are looking to make the project more advanced. The previous suggestions will add more variables to the study, making it more advanced than just having cell phone conversations as one variable.

-Pharma

PharmaMan wrote:Hello,

Tell us in what ways you are looking to make the project more advanced. The previous suggestions will add more variables to the study, making it more advanced than just having cell phone conversations as one variable.

-Pharma

Thanks for trying to help! Our teacher told my partner and I that we need to make our project more advanced. We thought of adding more variables, but she said that would just make the project take longer. Do you happen to know of a way to make this project better, we really to want to go to the regional science fair!

Thanks,
Ray

Adding more variables to the study shouldn't add much more time to complete the project, but there are other ways to increase the complexity of the study.

One suggestion can be to test different types of conversations. For example, one person could be having an engaging conversation where they really need to think about what they are saying to the other person (say, a technical conversation) versus a simple conversation. Having a more in-depth phone conversation should, in theory, negatively affect reaction time since they can be concentrating more on the conversation versus the task testing the reaction time.

Let us know if you have any further questions. Best of luck!
-Pharma

Perhaps you could go down the route of 'how does using a phone affect driving reaction time?'; setup the experiment so the ruler drop is against a wall, the participant is sitting down with their foot in line with the ruler and they have to use their foot to stop the ruler (simulating braking time). Or, use a reaction time tester, such as http://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime to make the results more precise, if you could somehow set it up so the participant presses a button with their foot to press the mouse pad that would be even better! (perhaps a bluetooth mouse might make this easier?) just spit balling ideas, but let me know if this is the direction you were thinking, and good luck!