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Perception Of Hill Slants

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It is widely accepted that our actions within our environments have a bioenergetic cost. This does not apply solely to physiological actions; an abundance of psychological research indicates that a multitude of cognitive tasks and functions also have associated bioenergetic costs. The brain’s singular source of energy is from glucose which is carried in the bloodstream, or from stores of glycogen in the liver (Schnall, Zadra & Proffitt, 2010) if glucose is not readily available in the blood. Conversely, low levels of glucose may lead to deterioration of both physical and psychological functioning. Schnall et al. proposed that supplementation of glucose via providing participants with sugary drinks could increase perception accuracy of hill …show more content…

Participants initially completed a Stroop task; this was so glucose was absorbed in the bloodstream of participants who had consumed the sugary drink and depleted in those who had not. Following the Stroop task, participants self-reported their weight and the experimenter placed weights which were approximately 20% of the participant’s reported weight into a backpack, which the participant was then instructed to put on. Whilst wearing the backpack, participants were asked to give a slant estimation of a hill. Three measures were used to record the estimation: a verbal estimation of the hill’s angle, a visual matching task where participants adjusted a disk to represent their estimate of the angle, and a haptic measure in which participants used their hand to adjust a board to their estimated angle without looking at their hand. Results were analysed using a between-factor ANOVA; significant results were found for verbal and visual measures but not for haptic, which was consistent with the theory that haptic estimates are not affected by glucose. The second similarly involved a Stroop task, self-reported weight, and provision of a sugary / non-sugary drink (in this case, Coke or Coke Zero). Participants’ blood glucose levels were measured before they consumed the drink using a finger-prick test, and ten

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