Chewing Gum Prior to Mental Tests Boosts Performance

Chewing a gum five minutes before you take a test could be all that it takes to boost your performance according to a new study conducted by researchers at St Lawrence University.

Psychologist Dr Serge Onyper made use of the finding that physical activity before any test is beneficial and tried to find whether even minimal activity helped those who took the tests. Around 80 undergraduate students took part in the study with the researchers testing to see the effect of chewing gum before and during the tests.

They found that chewing gum five minutes before starting the test provided a mental boost for the first 20 minutes of the test. However chewing gum during the test proved to be counterproductive and distracted the brain from mental or thinking processes.

"Clear performance advantages emerge when gum is chewed prior to (but not during) [mental] testing", the researchers wrote in their report which has been published in the journal Appetite.

Source: Medindia