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Kalyn & Karina

Hypothesis: How does the sight affect reaction rates? We predicted that using your sight will give you a faster reaction time because your body is anticipating the shock and therefore is primed to send the electrical signals to the brain.

T1 = Time to Muscle activity

T2 = Time to button press

T3 = Time from muscle activity to button press.

Touch knee with dominate hand while eyes are closed

Experiment #1

T1 = 0.255

T2 = 0.310

T3 = 0.055

Experiment #2

T1 = 0.251

T2 = 0.295

T3 = 0.044

Experiment #3

T1 = 0.304

T2 = 0.325

T3 = 0.021

Close Eyes

Experiment # 1

T1 = 0.242

T2 = 0.265

T3 = 0.023

Experiment #2

T1 = 0.216

T2 = 0.242

T3 = 0.026

Experiment #3

T1 = 0.198

T2 = 0.230

T3 = 0.032

Open Eyes – Look directly at experimenter

Experiment #1

T1 = 0.127

T2 = 0.273

T3 = 0.146

Experiment #2

T1 = 0.102

T2 = 0.268

T3 = 0.166

Experiment #3

T1 = 0.110

T2 = 0.265

T3 = 0.155

Conclusion: We found that the time from muscle activity to button press, our T3 results, showed faster response times when the participant’s eyes were closed rather than when they were open. We feel this is because using your sight creates more distractions for the body to process since it must account for multiple stimuli and the added shock. This makes opening your eyes result in a slower response time while closing the eyes primes the body for a response.

When your eyes are closed you can directly focus on the sensation and therefore the electrical signal of the shock can be relayed to the brain at a faster pace. Besides sight other factors could be taken into consideration which would also affect the reaction time of an individual. These factors include sobriety, fatigue, hunger and other things.  Since factors vary greatly among individuals this would account for the large class differentiations result times found.