Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hey my projects in how fear changes with age. Any one that can help it would be great.

Hello,
I'd first start by classifying things into categories in terms of age and levels/types of fear:
Some suggestions:
First, I would clearly define what "fear" means to you (use dictionary.com or a traditional dictionary)...
Second, I would classify your study into age segments so you can begin to make connections/draw conclusions by observing the trend over time (to me, it would seem to be appropriate to use 5 year segments (5-10, 11-15, etc.)...
Also, I would try to attach some kind of numerical value to levels of fear (this seems to be the most difficult part of your project), and I would add another layer to the project by discussing WHAT people are afraid of for each age segment...
Hope that helps...

I found this article on "Age-related changes in fear behavior and regional brain monoamines distribution in rats" at
http://www.nencki.gov.pl/pdf/an/vol64/2/kopr.pdf

It seems to relate to your kind of experiment, but it's also pretty complicated. Your topic is very general so far, so I think you should consider narrowing it down- with an exact definition of fear (as was already said) and a way of measuring/detecting the "levels" of fear in people of different ages.

Here's an example: let's say you experiment with fear by having your test subjects view the same scene of a scary movie. Usually peoples' pulses will go up when watching somehing that scares them; it makes their heart race. You could test the test subjects of different ages by measuring their pulses. This would still be complicated, however, because you would need to take into account how maximum heart rate goes down as people age. Maybe you could compare the results of pulses to maximum heart rate, and then measure the levels of fear by the rate of the resulted heart rate to maximum for that person's age.

Ex: 10 yr. old = 100 bpm (beats per minute)/180 bpm (maximum 10 yr. old heart rate)

This is just a "for instance" (not exact numbers.)

Hope it helps!

Thanks. :surprised: