COUNTING SHEEP BLOG

STUDENTS PEN NAME:  Starfire and Over-thorns-to-the-stars

ASPIRE MENTORS: Matt Gilbert

OBSERVATIONS/BACKGROUND: We grow sleepy due to signals from our body telling our brains we are tired or from signals from the environment telling us that its dark outside. The rise and sleep inducing chemicals like Adenosine and Melatonin send us into a light slumber that grows deeper and causes heart rate to slow down and our muscles to relax. When we loose precious moments of sleep, learning, memory, mood and reaction time are affected. Sleeplessness may also cause inflammation, hallucination, high blood pressure and is linked to diabetes and obesity. Studies show that chronically sleeping fewer then six hours increases stroke risk by 4.5 time,compared to those getting a consistent 7-8 hours of much needed rest. Sleep is split into two major sections that repeat around every ninety minutes; NREM sleep (non rapid eye movement) and REM sleep (rapid eye movement). NREM sleep accounts for around 75% of your nightly sleep, and is split into four parts, while REM sleep takes up 25%. REM sleep is when we dream, and NREM sleep is when our bodies repair and replenish themselves for the day ahead.

QUESTION: Will more or less sleep aid our adolescent human test subjects in performing better with reaction time, memory and hand-eye coordination?

HYPOTHESIS: Since sleep deprivation can cause hallucinations, depression and a weaker immune response, we hypothesis that more sleep will benefit our adolescent human test subjects in reaction time, memory, and hand eye coordination.

MATERIALS: 

-SleepBot app, or a logbook to track your sleep time and sleep quality.

-Willing test subjects.

-Games to test reaction time, memory and hand-eye coordination.

See links below:

https://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/java/redgreen.html | reaction time

http://braingames1.aarp.org/elephant_memory.html | memory

http://www.learn4good.com/games/online/concentration-handeyecoordination.htm | hand-eye coordination

PROCEDURE: 

1) We asked our grade 7 class and another 5/6 split class for volunteers.

2) After we acquired our student volunteers, with parent permission, we asked them to track their sleep time and quality with a logbook or the SleepBot app.

3) When they arrived at school in the morning, if they have logged their sleep, we pulled them from class and tested their reaction time, memory and hand-eye coordination.

4) We recorded their results

5) We repeated this process for 2 weeks. Somedays students were absent for the day and  so could not take the tests.

EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN:

The constants in this study are: the tests we conducted, the time of day we conducted the tests, and we tested the same adolescents each day.

The manipulated / Independent variable is the amount of sleep received per night

The responding / Dependent variable is the results for each individual person for reaction time, memory and hand-eye coordination, and that we tested each individual first thing in the morning everyday

DATA:

Data can be found here: Science Test Data Sheet – Google Docs

RESULTS:

Elephant Memory

Subjects were given a list of 25 words and 60 seconds to memorize each of them. The subjects were asked to recall the words by recognizing and selecting them from a second set of words. But there were many words in the second set that were not present in the first.

In this graph, you see the trend line(the blue line) going down. This means that with more sleep our test subjects got, the lesser amount of time it took for them to remember the words. This graph shows there is a noticeable improvement, but not as drastic as the reaction time with a ruler. It is enough of a difference to make an impact, although a minor one.

 

Elephant Memory

In this graph, you see the trend line(the blue line) going down. This means that with more sleep our test subjects got, the more words they remembered. This graph shows that there was a very slight decrease in performance level with more sleep.

 

Correlation of Elephant Memory seconds and % of words remembered

 

In this graph, the trend line(the blue line) is showing that the long participants took to respond, the fewer words they seemed to remember.

 

 

 

 

Reaction Time: The Ruler Drop Test Experiment

• We asked our first test subject to sit in a chair and look across the room.
• Next we had the volunteer place their forearm over the edge of the table.
• We asked our volunteer’s to clasp their hand, with enough room for the ruler to fit between
• Let your volunteer practice holding the ruler with those two fingers.
• Now, ask your volunteer to remove their fingers from the ruler while you continue hold it so that the bottom of the ruler is at a height of 2cm above their fingers.
• Tell your volunteer that you will release the ruler without telling them. Their job will be to catch it with their thumb and forefinger as soon as they sense it dropping.
• Drop the ruler. When your volunteer catches it, record the number on the ruler displayed just over her thumb. The lower the number, the faster her reaction time.
• Conduct several trials with the same volunteer, dropping the ruler from 2cm above their fingers each time.
• Record the results.

 

In this graph, you see the trend line(the blue line) going down. This means that with more sleep our test subjects got, the better they did. This graph shows there was a significant improvement with more sleep, the drastic plunging of the line is what shows us this.

 

 

RED LIGHT – GREEN LIGHT Reaction time test

Instructions: 

1. Click the large button on the right to begin.
2. Wait for the stoplight to turn green.
3. When the stoplight turns green, click the large button quickly.
4. Click the large button again to continue to the next test.

In this graph, you see the trend line(the blue line) going down. This means that with more sleep our test subjects got, the better their reaction time is. This graph shows that there was a very slight improvement with more sleep, though there is not enough of improvement to make an impact on the results.

 

 

Hand-Eye Coordination Game – Catch 33

How To Play: Use your computer mouse to “catch” the red moving numbers in the game screen. Once you hover over the correct number it disappears. You don’t need to click on them. The numbers go in sequence from 1 – 33 (for example, 1,2,3,4,5…33). You can see the number you need to catch beside “catch this“ in the top right corner of the game screen. When you have caught all the numbers (1-33) you can see your game time (in seconds). You are now given the option to try again.

 

In this graph, you see the trend line(the blue line) going down. This means that with more sleep our test subjects got, the better their hand-eye coordination is. This graph shows that there was a very slight improvement with more sleep, though there is not enough of improvement to make an impact on the results.

In most of the graphs the line downwards shows an improvement, because our answers needed a lower answer, though in some graphs, the results only showed slight fluctuations .

CONCLUSION: 

Our investigation asked the question, will more or less sleep aid our adolescent human test subjects in performing better with reaction time, memory and hand-eye coordination.

We hypothesized that more sleep would benefit our adolescent human test subjects in reaction time, memory, and hand eye coordination.

At first we had graphed our data into line graphs and looked at the data individually. When we did this we did not see a significant change and assumed that your sleep time did not affect your ability to perform better or worse with reaction time, memory and hand-eye coordination.

But later on when we approached a new way to look at the data with a scatter graph, and viewed the data as a whole and not individually, only then did we realize that there is a significant result. We learned that with more sleep most of the time there was an increase in performance levels. One of our most important findings is that adolescent students we tested seem to get enough sleep, and are not sleep deprived.

IDEAS FOR FURTHER INVESTIGATIONS?:

Something we learned from talking with scientists is that, doing the testing for a longer period of time would ensure that our experiment is fair.  If we decide to try this project again, we would definitely want more volunteers who have a varied sleep time(e. g. nurses, doctors, plant operators, etc) so we can not only see how more sleep affects you, but also see the effect of minimal sleep. We would test more people from each age group and gender to compare if how old you are, and if you are male or female, would affect your results. Also testing not only first thing in the morning but also at the end of the day.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: We would like to give credit to TED-Ed, all our test subjects, Mathew Gilbert, Lori Gilbert, and the SleepBot app.