Science+Experiment+2

__Topic:__
Video Games and Reaction Time

__Question:__
Do video games affect reaction time?

__Background Information:__
According to Jonathan E. Thiele video games do not really affect the reaction time of people. They did a test on people to see if the urgency of video games would affect the reaction time of them. At the end of there experiment they found that the urgency in the video game did not really affect the reaction time of the people they tested. They also state that further analysis is unnecessary. []

According to the website http://www.kidsandcomputers.co.uk/can-computer-games-help-improve-reaction-times.html many people like video games but mostly boys. And they also state that video games do in fact affect your reaction time. But only if the game time is controlled. If it is uncontrolled then it does not have a positive action on people. Video games can also be used as an educational aid. They also say that there are some other benefits from video games to. One benefit that it says is better vision. []

According to the website http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project_ideas/HumBio_p025.shtml Sometime in a persons late 20's is when a person reaches there fastest reaction time. Then from there their reaction time starts to slowly slowdown. Up till their 50's and 60's then they start to slow down even faster. The reaction to sound is shown to be a lot faster than the reaction to visual. Reaction times have also been shown to be dependent upon many factors, such as a person's age, genetics, gender, health, right- or left-handedness. []

__Hypothesis__
My hypothesis is that people who play video games regularaly will have a faster reaction time than people who do not play video games regularly.

__Procedure__

 * 1) First I will make a test for people to take to get info on how much video games they play.
 * 2) Next I will have them take the test.
 * 3) Then when they are done i will have them do a reaction game online to get there average reaction time.
 * 4) I will then record that and put them into a category of every day, every other day, once a week, twice a mount, and never.
 * 5) I will repeat steps 2-4 about 14 more times to get a total of 30 people.
 * 6) Then I will get the average for each group.
 * 7) Next I will compare the final averages.
 * 8) Finally I will see if my hypothesis was right and or if it was wrong.

__Materials__

 * Computer
 * paper
 * pencil
 * printer
 * people to test

__Experiment__
do the experiment.

__Data__
every day || Average GP every other day || Normal GP once a week || Semi GP twice a month || Not a GP never || Key GP = Game Player ||
 * || Addicted GP
 * Person 1 ||  ||   || .232 ||   ||   ||   ||
 * Person 2 ||  ||   ||   || .426 ||   ||   ||
 * Person 3 || .198 ||  ||   ||   ||   ||   ||
 * Person 4 ||  || .223 ||   ||   ||   ||   ||
 * Person 5 ||  ||   || .281 ||   ||   ||   ||
 * Person 6 || .326 ||  ||   ||   ||   ||   ||
 * Person 7 ||  || .271 ||   ||   ||   ||   ||
 * Person 8 ||  || .214 ||   ||   ||   ||   ||
 * Person 9 || .193 ||  ||   ||   ||   ||   ||
 * Person 10 ||  || .212 ||   ||   ||   ||   ||
 * Person 11 || .242 ||  ||   ||   ||   ||   ||
 * Person 12 || .230 ||  ||   ||   ||   ||   ||
 * Person 13 || .218 ||  ||   ||   ||   ||   ||
 * Person 14 ||  || .274 ||   ||   ||   ||   ||
 * Person 15 ||  ||   ||   ||   || .529 ||   ||
 * Total Averages || .235 || .239 || .257 || .426 || .529 ||  ||

__Conclusion__ Do video games affect reaction time? My hypothesis is people who play video games regularaly will have a faster reaction time than people who do not play video games regularly. My hypothesis was correct because the people that play games more had a faster reaction time average than the rest. As you see the less they played games the slower there average was. So this shows my hypothesis was correct and playing some video games do infact make your reaction time faster so you can react to things around you faster. I think I could have done some things a little differently. Like I could have tested more people like my whole class room which might have gave me bigger numbers which might have given me a little bit different results. I also have a question that if you could be an every day gameplayer what if the type of game you played could have slowed your reaction time?