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Ruth Goodlaxson's picture

Don't Hold Your Breath

... get it?

We decided to test the effects of breath holding on thinking, acting and reading time. If the different times were effected independently, we would be able to say that they are truly distinct processes. We hypothesized that breath holding would improve acting time because the subject would be more focused, but reading and thinking time will increase because there would be less oxygen getting to the brain.

 

Control times for Ruth:

Acting: 275 milliseconds

Thinking: 132 milliseconds

Reading: 106 milliseconds

 

Two Trial Times with Breath Holding:

Acting: 337 milliseconds, 435 milliseconds

Thinking: 122 milliseconds, 38 milliseconds

ReadingL 132 milliseconds, 151 milliseconds

This demonstrates a significant increase in acting time, negating our hypothesis. This shows acting to be a distinct process from reading and thinking, and one that is effected by the lack of oxygen. Thinking and reading overall weren't very effected by breath holding, but one of our numbers seemed to be off.

Distraction was probably not the problem for acting, because distraction also would have effected reading and thinking. Perhaps the oxygen deprivation effected the muscle response and slowed reactions.

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