Demand characteristics, pre-test attitudes and time-on-task trends in the effects of chewing gum on attention and reported mood in healthy volunteers

Chewing Entrains Cyclical Actions but Interferes With Discrete Actions in Children

Functional chewing patterns are achieved early in life prior to other motor skills like walking. Chewing seems to improve specific aspects of attention; however, there is limited research on chewing in dual motor tasks. This study examined relationships between chewing and secondary motor tasks in children. Sixteen typically developing children (13.1 ± 2.3 years) participated in finger tapping, simple reaction time, and walking while chewing at different speeds. The chewing rates varied when produced with a secondary motor task, especially for slow chewing and preferred chewing, and the secondary motor tasks were differentially influenced by the chewing. This relationship was not as strong as what has been reported in adults. It appears the neural oscillatory mechanisms involved in chewing and the secondary motor tasks may not be fully developed in children.

Effect of chewing gum on stress, anxiety, depression, self-focused attention, and academic success: A randomized controlled study

Chewing gum is thought to increase focus via a reduction in stress and anxiety. Chewing gum contributes to success by improving short-term memory. This study was conducted to determine the effect of chewing gum on stress, anxiety, depression, self-focused attention, and exam success. A randomized controlled trial was conducted with a total of 100 students. In the long-term (19 days) and short-term (7 days) chewing gum groups, the pretest scores of depression, anxiety, and stress were significantly higher than the posttest scores. Although the posttest scores on the self-focused attention subscale were higher than the pretest scores in long-term chewing gum group, there was no significant difference between the pretest and posttest scores in this group. The academic success mean scores of the long-term experimental group students were higher than those of the other groups. Students are recommended to chew gum before exams in order to overcome exam stress and to enhance exam success. However, chewing gum is not recommended in the long term for students who have difficulty focussing their attention.

Vigilance Decrement and Enhancement Techniques: A Review

This paper presents the first comprehensive review on vigilance enhancement using both conventional and unconventional means, and further discusses the resulting contradictory findings. It highlights the key differences observed between the research findings and argues that variations of the experimental protocol could be a significant contributing factor towards such contradictory results. Furthermore, the paper reveals the effectiveness of unconventional means of enhancement in significant reduction of vigilance decrement compared to conventional means. Meanwhile, a discussion on the challenges of enhancement techniques is presented, with several suggested recommendations and alternative strategies to maintain an adequate level of vigilance for the task at hand. Additionally, this review provides evidence in support of the use of unconventional means of enhancement on vigilance studies, regardless of their practical challenges.

Chewing and attention: a positive effect on sustained attention

Chewing is crushing food not only to aid swallowing and digestion, but also to help stress relief and regulate cognitive function, especially in attention. It is well known that chewing gum is used for sleepiness prevention during work, learning, and driving, suggesting a link between chewing and sustained attention. We hypothesized that chewing elevates attention and/or alertness, leading to improvements in cognitive performance. We carried out a systematic review of the PubMed database. We inspected the attributes of effects on attention in studies investigating the effects of chewing on attention or alertness conducted with pre-post design in healthy subjects, except elderly. We identified 151 references, 22 of which were included: 14 (64%) showed positive attributes of effects on attention, 1 (5%) showed negative attributes of effects on attention, 5 (23%) showed both positive and negative attributes of effects on attention, and 2 (9%) showed no significant attributes of effects on attention. Thus, positive attributes of effects of chewing on attention, especially on sustained attention, were shown in over half of the reports. These effects also appeared with improvement in mood and stress relief and were influenced by time-on-task effect. Further studies are needed, but chewing could be useful for modifying cognitive function.

Effects and after-effects of chewing gum on vigilance, heart rate, EEG and mood

Research has shown that chewing gum improves attention, although the mechanism for this effect remains unclear. This study investigated the effects and after-effects of chewing gum on vigilance, mood, heart rate and EEG. Participants completed a vigilance task four times; at baseline, with or without chewing gum, and twice post-chewing. EEG alpha and beta power at left frontal and temporal lobes, subjective mood and heart rate were assessed. Chewing gum shortened reaction time and increased the rate of hits, although hits fell during the second post-chewing task. Chewing gum heightened heart rate, but only during chewing. Gum also increased beta power at F7 and T3 immediately post-chewing, but not following the post-chewing tasks. The findings show that chewing gum affects several different indicators of alertness.

Effects of chewing on cognitive processing speed

In recent years, chewing has been discussed as producing effects of maintaining and sustaining cognitive performance. We have reported that chewing may improve or recover the process of working memory; however, the mechanisms underlying these phenomena are still to be elucidated. We investigated the effect of chewing on aspects of attention and cognitive processing speed, testing the hypothesis that this effect induces higher cognitive performance. Seventeen healthy adults (20-34 years old) were studied during attention task with blood oxygenation level-dependent functional (fMRI) at 3.0 T MRI. The attentional network test (ANT) within a single task fMRI containing two cue conditions (no cue and center cue) and two target conditions (congruent and incongruent) was conducted to examine the efficiency of alerting and executive control. Participants were instructed to press a button with the right or left thumb according to the direction of a centrally presented arrow. Each participant underwent two back-to-back ANT sessions with or without chewing gum, odorless and tasteless to remove any effect other than chewing. Behavioral results showed that mean reaction time was significantly decreased during chewing condition, regardless of speed-accuracy trade-off, although there were no significant changes in behavioral effects (both alerting and conflict effects). On the other hand, fMRI analysis revealed higher activations in the anterior cingulate cortex and left frontal gyrus for the executive network and motor-related regions for both attentional networks during chewing condition. These results suggested that chewing induced an increase in the arousal level and alertness in addition to an effect on motor control and, as a consequence, these effects could lead to improvements in cognitive performance.