Abstract

The purpose of the study is to investigate if the effects of chewing cinnamon flavored gum can increase mood, feeling and spelling acquisition. 5th grade students (n=22) at Ilshin elementary school in South Korea served as participants. The same students were required to take 4 spelling tests with 1 given every day over the course of 4 days. For the 1^st day, students were required to answer pre-questionnaires pertaining to mood and feeling before studying the spelling words. Students were then given 15 minutes to study while using the rote learning techniques to memorize spelling words; however, they were not given any gum. Afterwards, students were required to take the spelling test to determine memorization achievement. Lastly, students were required to retake the post-questionnaires based on mood and feeling again. On days 2-4 the same protocol was performed, however with 5, 10 or 15 minutes of gum chewing. The results indicated that in terms of the test scores, 15 minutes of chewing resulted in better performance than 5 or 10 minutes of chewing. However, there were no significant outcomes related to the mood and feeling scores. Future research should examine the type of information used for the memorization task, since recall vs. recognition tasks may be differentially affected by chewing.

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