EFFECT OF CAFFEINE AND GENDER ON ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE
Abstract
Academic Performance (AP) is of primary importance to undergraduate students because it is related to future economic and occupational success. Therefore, it is not surprising that students want to maximize their Grade Point Average (GPA), by studying hard so as to perform well in their examination which is the common measure of AP. This study explored the effect of Caffeine and Gender on Academic Performance among undergraduate students. 32 volunteered undergraduates studying Psychology in Enugu State University of Science and Technology (ESUT) were randomly assigned to groups: experimental and control groups. The experimental group which comprised 16 subjects, 8 males 8 females was administered with caffeine as a treatment condition; whereas the control group which was made up of 8 males and 8 females’ subjects were given chocolate tea as a placebo. A two- way ANOVA (F-test) was employed to test the hypothesis. Results confirmed non-significant effect of caffeine use on Academic performance F (1, 28)=.056p>.05 Also there was non - significant influence of gender on academic performance F(1,28)=1.073,p>.05 and no interaction effect of caffeine and gender on academic performance. The result was discussed in relation to relevant literature.
Full Text:
PDFReferences
Ann-Maree, N. (2004). “What is the difference between sex and gender” Monash University. www. Med. Monash.edu.au/gendermed/sexandgender.html Retrieved November 2014.
Atkinson, R. C, & Shiffrin, R. M. (1968). Human memory: A proposed system and its control Processes. The psychology of learning and motivation 2, 89-195.
Baddeley, A. D. (1966). The influence of acoustic and semantic similarity on long term memory for word sequences. Quarterly in J. Exp. Psychology. New York.
Birke, L. (2001). In Pursuit of differences: The gender and Science Reader. Routledge : New York.
Bolton, S. (1981). “Caffeine psychological effects, use and Abuse” Orthomolecular Psychiatry 10 (3): 202-211.
Bornstein, K, (1995). Gender Outlaw- on Men, Women and the Rest of Us. Vintage publications, ISBN 06797570 15 PP. 51-52.
Carlson, N.R. (2010). Psychology: the science of behavior. Boston, Mass: Allyn &Becon. 1SBN
Conway, M. A. & Pledell-Pearce, C. W. (2000). The construction of autobiographical memories in the self-memory system. Psychological Review, 107 (2), 261-288.
Cowan, N (2001). “The Magical Number 4 in short-term memory: a reconsideration of mental storage capacity” Behavioral Brain Science 24 (1): 87-114.
Foerde, K., & Poldrack, R. A. (2009). Procedural Learning in humans. The New Encyclopedia of Neuroscience, 7, 1083-1091.
Gilliland K. & Andress, D. (1981). Ad lib caffeine consumption symptoms of caffeinism, and academic performance. Am J. Psychiatry. 138 (4): 15-24.
Gonaella, A. (2009). The relationship between caffeine consumption and a student’s GPA. Diabetics and Human Nutrition. Undergraduate Research in Nutrition and food science Unpublished.
Graham, T. E., Hibbert, E & Sathasivam, P. (1998). Metabolic and Exercise endurance effects of coffee and caffeine Ingestion J. APPL. Physiology. 85 (3) 3-9.
Heather, N & Robertson, I (1998). Why is abstinence necessary for the recovery of some problem drinkers? British Journal of Addiction 78,139-144.
Johns J., Svoboda, K. (2009). The effects of caffeine drinks and energy drinks on college students’ mental performance Department of Psychology. Beloit College.
Lussier, L. (2010). Conscientiousness as a mediator of caffeine use and Academic performance. The Honors programme. Senior capstone project April 2010.
Manelis, A. Hanson, C., & Hanson, S. J. (2011). Implicit memory for object locations depends on reactivation of enclosing-related brain regions. Human Brain Mapping, 32 (1), 32-50.
Nehlig, A. Daval J. L., Debly G (1992). Caffeine and the central nervous system mechanisms of action, biochemical, metabolic and stimulant effects. Brain Res. Rev. 17 (2): 39-70.
Omeje, O. & Agu N. M. (2004). Fundamentals of Psychology. Enugu Ofiaco Productions.
Owie, I,(2015). Alienation and the use of psychogenic drugs among adolescents in Nigeria: Rep. Journal of Alcohol and Drug Education, 331 (2), 37-40.
Pela, O A, (2014), Anxiety and Drug Use. Nigerian Journal of Clinical Psychology,5 (1&2),25-28.
Poropat, A. (2009). A meta-analysis of the five factor model of personality and academic performance. Psychological Bulletin, 135 (2), 322-338. Retrieved December 2, 2014.
Ranganath, C. C., Michael B. X., Craig, J. B. (2005). Working memory maintenance contributes to long term memory formation: Neural and Behavioural Evidence. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 17 (7), 94-100.
Shepard, D L, (2009). Psychology: The Science of Human Behaviour. Chicago: Science Research Association.
Siegel, S, (2003). Classical conditioning, drug tolerance and drug dependence. In Research advances in alcohol and drug problems,eds. R.G.Smart, F.B.Glasser, Iseal, H, Kalant,R.E, and W.Schmidt. New York: Plenum.
Sijuwola, O A, (2008). Psychosocial Correlated of students’ smoking behavior. West African Journal of Medicine, 7(2), 112-116.
Snel J. & Lorist M. M. (2011). Effects of caffeine on sleep and cognition. Prog. Brain Res. Progress in Brain Research, 17, 90-105.
Spaniel, J., Madden, D. J., Voss, A. (2006). A Diffusion Model Analysis of Adult Age Differences in Episodic and semantic Long term memory Retrieval. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, memory, and Cognition, 32 (1), 101-117.
Sperling, G. (2003). A Model for Visual Memory Tasks. Human Factors, 5, 19-31.
Tarnopolsky, M. A. (2010). “Caffeine and Cretin use in Sport”. Nutrition of Metabolism. New York.
Udry, J. R. (1994). “The Nature of Gender”: Demography 31 (4): 561-573.
Wood, R., Baxter, P, & Belpaeme, T. (2011). A Review of long-Term Memory in Natural and Synthetic Systems. Adaptive Behaviour, 20 (2), 81-103.
Yudkin, M. (1978). “Trans-sexualism and Women: A Critical Perspective”. Feminist studies 4 (3): 97-106.
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.