We hebben het in ons nieuwe boek ook heel kort over een mogelijk positief (maar kort) effect van kauwgom op ons brein. Een nieuwe studie bevestigt het positieve effect. Voor deze studie werd gekeken naar het effect op het onthouden van auditieve informatie:

The study involved 38 participants being split in to two groups. Both groups completed a 30 minute audio task that involved listening to a list of numbers from 1-9 being read out in a random manner. Participants were scored on how accurately and quickly they were able to detect a sequence of odd-even-odd numbers, such as 7-2-1. Participants also completed questionnaires on their mood both before and after the task. (bron)

De resultaten toonden dat de deelnemers die kauwgom gebruikten snellere reactietijden neerzetten en meer accurate resultaten behaalden dan de deelnemers die geen kauwgom kauwden. Dit was zeker het geval tegen het einde aan van de test.

Abstract van het onderzoek:

We examine the impact of chewing gum on a Bakan-type vigilance task that requires the continual updating of short-term order memory. Forty participants completed a 30-minute auditory Bakan-task either with, or without, the requirement to chew gum. Self-rated measures of mood were taken both pre- and post-task. As expected, the vigilance task produced a time dependent performance decrement indexed via decreases in target detections and lengthened correct reaction times (RTs) and a reduction in post-task self-rated alertness scores. The declines in both performance and subjective alertness were attenuated in the chewing chewing-gum group. In particular, correct RTs were significantly shorter following the chewing of gum in the latter stages of the task. Additionally, the gradients of decline for target detection and incline for correct RTs were both attenuated for the chewing-gum group. These findings are consistent with the data of Tucha and Simpson (2011), who showed beneficial effects of chewing gum in the latter stages of a 30 min. visual attention task, and extend their data to a task that necessitates the continuous updating of order memory. It is noteworthy that our data contradict the claim (Kozlov, Hughes, & Jones???, 2012) that chewing gum negatively impacts short-term memory task performance.