{"id":1245,"date":"2014-05-03T01:55:29","date_gmt":"2014-05-03T05:55:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/?p=1245"},"modified":"2017-06-27T13:35:15","modified_gmt":"2017-06-27T17:35:15","slug":"does-caffeine-help-academic-performance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/2014\/05\/03\/does-caffeine-help-academic-performance\/","title":{"rendered":"Does Caffeine Help Academic Performance?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Last October Neuro<\/em>, an energy drink company, held an online contest to name the newest flavor of their\u00a0NeuroSonic<\/em> energy drink. Without thinking much about it, I submitted a name and entered my address (all entrants got mailed a coupon for a free drink, after all!). Imagine my surprise when, two weeks later, I was notified that my submission made it into the top ten, earning me the consolation prize: an entire year of NeuroSonic! Two months later, 16 crates of the energy drink arrived at my house: a total of 384 bottles and 38,400 mg of caffeine. \u00a0I returned from winter break with 12 crates of\u00a0my newly-acquired energy drink in tow, and neatly stacked them in my dorm. Every day I’d slip a NeuroSonic\u00a0into my backpack, drinking it during my morning class. After a few weeks of this, I started drinking another bottle in the afternoon while doing homework. Then I began to wonder: is all of this caffeine actually improving my academic performance? What will happen when I run out of my free caffeinated beverage? Was there really “mental performance in every bottle\u00ae<\/b>“?<\/p>\n

Caffeine is an important part of many people’s diets, and it is especially popular among students. It is assumed by many that caffeine improves academic performance, yet few have tested it. A 2013 study published by Rogers et al. offers some valuable insight. In this study, the effects of caffeine (and caffeine withdrawal) on sleepiness, mental alertness, anxiety, and \u00a0motor skills were evaluated. The study included two groups of people:\u00a0those who do not consume caffeine or have a \u00a0low daily intake (<40mg), and those who have a medium to high daily intake (\u226540mg). From this point on, \u00a0the group with a low\/none daily intake will be called the “lower group”, and the group with higher intake will be the “higher group”. Participants were either given 250mg of caffeine pills or placebos after a night of abstaining from caffeine (for reference, an 8oz cup of coffee has about 100mg of caffeine) . Then they were asked to carry out a number of tasks, including a finger tapping exercise that measured motor skills and questions that used a 9 point scale to measure mental alertness, sleepiness, and anxiety\/jitteriness.<\/p>\n

Possibly the most important aspect of caffeine, its ability to reduce sleepiness, will be analyzed first. The study found that those in the lower group who received caffeine pills showed decreased sleepiness, while those in the same group who received a placebo showed a normal level of sleepiness. Those in the higher group who received caffeine showed a normal level of sleepiness, while those in the same group who received a placebo showed increased sleepiness. The lower placebo group showed sleepiness equal to that of the higher caffeine group. This shows that those who regularly consume caffeine are not decreasing overall sleepiness, but rather combating the sleepiness caused by caffeine withdrawal.<\/p>\n

Anxiety and jitteriness are common side effects of caffeine; jitteriness in particular is associated with too much caffeine intake. Anxiety\/\u00a0jitteriness was observed exclusively in the members of the lower group who received\u00a0caffeine. Those who regularly consume caffeine build up a tolerance which prevents\u00a0jitters.<\/p>\n

Mental alertness is directly tied to academic performance. It is what allows students to pay attention to lectures, study, and take tests. Mental alertness is dependent upon both sleepiness and concentration. Those in the higher group who received a placebo had a lower mental alertness, which was caused by their increased sleepiness. Those in the higher group who received caffeine as well as those in the lower group who received a placebo all showed no increase in mental alertness, as there was no increase or decrease in sleepiness. It would be tempting to conclude then that those in the lower group who received caffeine showed increased mental alertness, as they were the only group to show decreased sleepiness. However, that is not the case. The benefit of decreased sleepiness is cancelled out by jitteriness and anxiety, which can break concentration. Therefore, caffeine was not shown to increase mental alertness in any group, and therefore it does not increase academic performance.<\/p>\n

It is rather upsetting to discover that caffeine does not increase mental alertness. However, if it is any consolation, caffeine improved motor skills in both groups that received it. In fact, performance in the key tapping task (which measures motor performance) affects both groups equally; both groups that received caffeine tapped at the same speed. In addition to this, both groups that received a placebo also performed equally well, showing that caffeine tolerance or withdrawal has no effect on motor performance.<\/p>\n

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Here’s a quick table summarizing the findings of the experiment<\/p><\/div>\n

Overall, caffeine does little to improve academic performance other than combat its own withdrawal symptoms. However, caffeine’s ability to keep people awake longer, allowing for more waking hours, can prove invaluable in a college environment.<\/p>\n

As for the NeuroSonic, I managed to finish all of it (with the help of some friends) in a little under 4 months. I was too tired to go out and cash in on my $15 worth of 5\u00a2 state recycling refunds, so I just threw used the hall recycling bin.<\/p>\n

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Work Cited:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rogers, P., Heatherley, S., Mullings, E., & Smith, J. Faster but not smarter: effects of caffeine and caffeine withdrawal on alertness and performance.\u00a0Psychopharmacology<\/i>,\u00a0226<\/i>, 229-240. Retrieved April 28, 2014, from the Springer Link database.<\/p>\n

Here’s a link to the article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last October Neuro, an energy drink company, held an online contest to name the newest flavor of their\u00a0NeuroSonic energy drink. Without thinking much about it, I submitted a name and entered my address (all entrants got mailed a coupon for a free drink, after all!). Imagine my surprise when, two weeks later, I was notified […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5868,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80216,60348],"tags":[112],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1245"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5868"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1245"}],"version-history":[{"count":31,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3678,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1245\/revisions\/3678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}