Caffeine Investigation Folio Caffeine works similarly to the hormone adrenaline (State Government of Victoria, 2014) and increases dopamine levels making you feel happy. It blocks adenosine receptors, which prevents you from feeling drowsy (Staci, 2012). Caffeine also stimulates the brain, improves understanding, memory, reflexes and clarity of thoughts (Important Facts About Caffeine, 2011). The aim of the experiment is to test whether caffeine has an effect on psychological and physiological reaction times. This will be a beneficial experiment for regular caffeine consumers to determine whether caffeine will have a positive or negative effect on their alertness and reaction time. The hypothesis tested in the experiment will be; if you consume caffeine, your psychological and physiological reaction times will decrease. For the experiment, 30 year old women. 11 Psychology students will be asked, with informed consent, to record psychological reaction times from the Stroop test - and physiological reaction times from the reaction time test - with a timer, before and after caffeine consumption, collecting quantitative data objective. After collecting the data, it will be entered into two bar graphs and interpreted. For both the Stroop and reaction time tests, reaction times are expected to decrease with caffeine. It logically follows that caffeine will cause students to become more alert. Therefore, conclude that caffeine consumption will cause a decrease in psychological and physiological reaction times. Figure 1- The effect of caffeine on the average times of the reaction testFigure 2- The effect of caffeine on the average times of the Stroop testShown in Figu ...... middle of the sheet ...... yes, this experiment It would be useful for caffeine consumers to determine whether caffeine will have a positive or negative effect on their alertness. After the completion of the experiment, it can be concluded that this investigation would be a useful reference for caffeine consumers interested in the effect of caffeine on psychological and physiological reaction times. However, the results will not be specific to them and will need to be generalized, putting the reliability of the results at risk. That said, this experiment will have introduced a method of testing caffeine's effect on psychological and physiological reaction times, which they could undergo themselves. Works Cited http://blog.neosusa.com/2012/06/10-interesting- fact-about-caffeine/, http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/Caffeine , http://visual.ly/important-facts-about-caffeine