Science+Experiment+2

Question:
Is reaction time affected by gender?

Background Information: At the risk of being incorrect, in almost every age group, males have faster reaction times than females, and female disadvantage is not reduced by the last study is amazing because it included over 7,400 subjects. Bellis reported that the time to press a key in response to a light was 220 milliseconds for males and 260 milliseconds for females; for sound, the difference was 190 milliseconds for males to 200 milliseconds for females. In comparison, Engel reported a reaction time to sound of 227 milliseconds for male and to 242 milliseconds for female. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_time

However, things may be changing. Silverman reported evidence that the male visual reaction time is getting smaller (especially outside the US), possibly because more women are participating in driving and fast-action sports. Botwinick and Thompson found that almost all of the male-female difference was accounted for by the lag between the presentation of the stimulus and the beginning of muscle contraction. http://chss.montclair.edu/psychology/museum/mrt.html

Muscle contraction times were the same for males and females. In a surprising finding, Szinnai et al, found that gradual dehydration (loss of 2.6% of body weight over a 7-day period) caused females to have lengthened choice reaction time, but males to shorten choice reaction times. Adam et al reported that males use a more complex strategy than females. Barral and Debu found that while men were faster than women at aiming at a target, the women were more accurate. Javas and Yan reported that age-related deterioration in reaction time was the same in men and women. http://www.topendsports.com/testing/reactiontest.htm

Hypothesis:
I think that gender will not affect reaction time.

**Materials:**

 * Reaction time website. []
 * 6 people
 * The internet

**Procedure:**

 * 1) Get 6 test subjects. (10 males, 10 Females)
 * 2) I'm going to take them one at a time to test.
 * 3) I will have the person sit in a chair and relax their mind.
 * 4) I'm going to have them take a reaction time test.
 * 5) They will have to test five times.
 * 6) I will record all of their final test scores.
 * 7) I'm going to average up all of the test score.
 * 8) I am going to look at all of the averages and see if gender affected their reaction time.

Data:

 * Boy || Girl ||
 * Reaction time/ millisecond: || Reaction Time/ millisecond: ||
 * 0.23 || 0.29 ||
 * 0.27 || 0.84 ||
 * 0.24 || 0.41 ||
 * 0.21 || 0.46 ||
 * 0.26 || 0.53 ||
 * 0.29 || 0.31 ||
 * 0.26 || 0.46 ||
 * 0.34 || 0.35 ||
 * 0.22 || 0.35 ||
 * 0.21 || 0.38 ||
 * Avg. 0.25 || Avg. 0.45 ||

**Conclusion:**
Is reaction time affected by gender? I thought that gender would not affect reaction time. I was wrong because the males were faster with the reaction time test then the females. I found out that my results were more accurate when I gave out more tests. When I first started my experiment I was only going to give out 3 tests but then I switched to 10 tests because my information needed to have more density. If I could do it over again I would probably get more information on girls and boys thinking processes. I think that I would benefit from my experiment more if I understood what affected the males and females test sores.