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Reaction Time Lab

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Ladda Yang
Hour 2
Introduction:

What is the effect of hand dominance on reaction time? Your reaction time is how quick your neurons react to stimuli. Although reflexes and reactions seem similar, they are different. Your reflexes are involuntary and quicker, while your reactions require a little more time to react. For example, you shiver when it’s cold, that’s a reflex, your body is trying to speed up your heart rate to keep you warm. You react by closing your body up because of the neurons that were fired. Many factors have been shown to affect reaction time, i.e age, gender, physical fitness, and whether the reaction is visual or auditory.

The nervous system helps information travel through your body. Messages are sent to the cerebrum …show more content…

The accomplice should be standing directly in front of the participant with the ruler. The accomplice should also have their arm outstretched, parallel to their shoulder. The ruler will and should always be dropped at shoulder length. Make sure that the ruler is directly over the opening. Before you drop the ruler, make sure that someone, or you, is ready with the stopwatch.
3. Before you drop the ruler, make sure that the smallest number on the ruler is going first. Drop the ruler with no warning. The second you drop the ruler, also click your stopwatch.
4. The second your accomplice catches the ruler, stop the stopwatch. Record the time and then round to the nearest centimeter. Repeat steps 3-4 at least five times and then switch hands. Refer to figure 1 for help. Figure 1
5. Now the accomplice will have to switch hands. The less dominant hand will now be used to test reaction time, either your right or left. Repeat steps 1-4 at least five times and record your data.
6. Calculate the average length and time of those who were dominant in their right hand and those who were dominant in their left hand. After you do that, then you calculate the average length and time of their non-dominant hand for both cases.
Data:
Raw Data:
Dominant Hand vs. Non-dominant …show more content…

The data is reliable, but it is not valid. One reason would be that the only participants were female. If the participants were an equal amount of female and males of different ethnicities then the hypothesis could have been accepted. One of the reasons why the male participant was left out as an outlier was because he was a male. There was only one male student that participated. He was also left out because his reaction time was too quick compared to the other participants. There was a gap that was more than 4 inches at one point. To fix this, if another experiment was done, there will be an equal amount of male and female participants. Along with that, there will have to be some that are dominate in their left hand and some in their right hand. Another weakness within this experiment was that height the participants were catching it at. The ruler had been dropped at the same level each time except it had been caught at different levels. Participants were of different height, therefore their shoulder levels were at different heights and their hands were either closer to the ruler or farther away. To improve this situation, participants will all have to be at the same level. Instead of holding their arm in the air, participants will rest their arm on a flat surface and catch the ruler at the same

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