Science Project Idea - Research Paper Example

Moreover, Kowalski (1987) points out that another research found that several days of fasting produced irritability, muscular weakness and depression or apathy. Since then studies has focused on how cognition is affected by nutrition. The sparse research on effects of food deprivation has created a void for further studies. Up to date no research has investigated perseverance despite its significance in cognitive functioning. According to McLeod (2002), perseverance can be a better indicator other than achievement tests in growth assessments in thinking abilities and learning as perseverance assists in complex problems solving.

Testing as many cognition aspects as possible is the solution because the tasks nature is important when doing interpretation of the link between cognitive performance and food deprivation (Crumpton et al, 1966). Therefore, this research will help us understand how food deprivation for a short term affects perseverance and concentration with a difficult task. Particularly, participants starved for 24 hours will be expected to perform worse on perseverance task and concentration test than the ones starved for 12 hours who in turn are predicted to perform worse than the ones who were not starved. . (ii) Materials Accuracy and concentration speed will be measured using number matching test found online (www.

psychtests.com/tests/iq/concentration.html) which contained 25 numbers in 6 lines each as suggested by Eisenberger (1980). Participants will be required in 6 minutes to find in each line pairs of numbers that can add up to 10. Scores will be calculated as a percentage correctly pairs identified out of possible 120 (Eisenberger, 1980). On the hand, perseverance will be measured with a puzzle containing five octagons. Every octagon will include a specific object stencil such as flower or animal.

The octagons will be piled on top of another in a particular way to make a rabbit silhouette. However, three of the identified shapes will be altered slightly to make the task impossible. Finally, perseverance scores will be calculated as a number of minutes spent by a participant on the puzzle before giving up (Green, Elliman & Rogers, 1995). Results After following all the procedures and doing the experiment, the results were as follows. Three questions of manipulation check indicated that every participant followed the rules and perceived correctly their deprivation condition.

The average score for concentration was 77.78 with a standard deviation of 14.21 which was good. An average time of 24 minutes with standard deviation of 10.16 was averagely spent on the puzzle. From our prediction that 24 hour deprivation grouped participants would perform on the perseverance task and concentration test worse than 12 hour group participants, who would in turn perform worse than control group participants. From one way ANOVA, the results portrayed no significant effect of starvation condition on the concentration.

On another ANOVA showed a significant effect on starvation