Examining the Effects of Caffeine on Students’ Academic Performances

Group member
1. Khemjira Poyai Class M.6/14 No. 9
2. Ranchana Worahan Class M.6/14 No. 19
3. Waristeera Chan-iam Class M.6/14. No. 27
Learning Area
Biology
Research title
Examining the Effects of Caffeine on Students’ Academic Performances
Introduction
In the current society, Caffeine is one of the most widely consumed substances in many
countries around the world. It is commonly found in drinks and products including coffee,
energy drinks, tea, cola soft drinks, chocolate, and painkillers. Almost 90% of Americans drink
caffeinated beverages every day, and coffee seems to be their favorite. Caffeine is contained in
more than sixty plants, including coffee beans, tea leaves, cacao pods, and kola nuts, which is a
remarkable number, thus it has been hypothesized that caffeine was originally a minor nutrient,
not essential for the plant, but extremely useful as a pesticide. Caffeine content in beverages and
foods is increasing in terms of dose and availability, with recent estimates of total daily caffeine
consumption suggesting that the average person consumes 319.32 ± 180.94 mg of caffeine per
day.
Caffeine is most commonly used to improve mental alertness, but it also has many other
uses. For instance, although the effect of caffeine is always short-term, athletes use caffeine to
boost energy levels and increase endurance while playing sports. Low levels of oxygen in the
blood caused by exercise. Recent research shows that taking caffeine may improve breathing
during exercise, but does not affect blood levels of oxygen in athletes with low blood oxygen
levels during exercise. Not only that, caffeine also appears to improve airway function for up to 4
hours in people with asthma. When we consume caffeinated beverages and foods, our stomachs
and small intestines quickly absorb the caffeine. The maximum effects of caffeine usually occur
between 30-60 minutes within consumption, although this timing can vary widely among
individuals and other factors.
Caffeine can notably impact the onset of sleep and reduce sleep time, efficiency, and
satisfaction levels. Caffeine acts as an “adenosine receptor antagonist.” Adenosine is a substance
in your body that promotes sleepiness. Caffeine blocks the adenosine receptor to keep you from
feeling sleepy. One study also found that caffeine can delay the timing of your body clock. These
effects will reduce your total sleep time. These effects also can be stronger in older adults. It
takes their bodies a longer time to process caffeine.
 However, an average student’s life is closely associated with these beverages as students
and learners are likely to experience significant challenges such as taking exams and reading
books more than adults. Caffeine has been found to have the potential to increase IQ, help in
overnight study, increase self-confidence, increase reading power, increase recalling power,
increase study hours and provide energy and improve group activity.
Since students are exposed to a lot of academic activities, the majority of the students
tend to consume caffeinated beverages to enhance their academic performances. Hence, as a
student that has experienced the same scenario, we are interested and would like to specifically
discuss the effect of caffeine on memory consolidation, speed of reasoning, and attention.

Hypothesis
It is hypothesized that caffeine use has the potential to increase academic performance,
and there is a significant association with academic performance and caffeine consumption
among students. This could be useful for college students while studying because when
their concentration levels are higher, they are able to focus more on the information they are
trying to learn for the exam.

Objectives
● To study if caffeine enhances student performance.
● To find out if caffeine boosts energy levels and increases reading endurance.
● To clarify the misunderstanding about the effects of caffeine involving memory
consolidation or the ability to memorize things more efficiently, and the speed of
reasoning and attention.
● To determine how caffeine affects the body’s performance.

Preliminary Literature Review

A variety of research studies have shown that caffeine is a highly used stimulant in the
world, with up to 80% of the population consuming a caffeinated product every day(Ogawa N,
2007). The majority of university students consume caffeine on a daily basis; coffee is the main
source of ingested caffeine. The mean intake was 268 mg/day, with males consuming more
caffeine than females (Haitham, et al, 2020). Caffeine can be found in over 60 different plant
sources. It is naturally found in coffee beans, cacao beans, kola nuts, guarana berries, and tea
leaves including yerba mate (Heckman, Weil, & De Meji, 2010). The most popular caffeinated
beverage among students was tea followed by soft drinks and coffee respectively. Similar results
have been reported by the study of Iran in which tea was the most popular beverage among high
school students. However, studies from Saudi Arabia and South Africa reported coffee and soft
drinks were commonly consumed beverages among medical students. This can be attributed to
the fact that due to easy availability and inexpensiveness of tea, it is widely consumed in
Indo-Pak.
Caffeine is often consumed just after waking up to increase alertness and fight sleep
inertia (reduced motor dexterity and a subjective feeling of grogginess immediately following an
abrupt awakening) which may interfere with the ability to perform mental or physical tasks
(McAdam, 2017).
Caffeine and
Physical Performance
Caffeine is well known to enhance and prolong exercise performance. A study from
Brock Armstrong (2020) states that doses of 3 to 13 mg of caffeine per kilogram of body weight
(mg/kg) have been shown to improve exercise performance by stimulating the effect on the
central nervous system to reduce feelings of fatigue.
Moreover, it's also believed to enhance the body's ability to use its own fat as fuel, which
can effectively increase the time to exhaustion in endurance events. However, like the previous
studies, this topic needs further testing and research to compile a more comprehensive study on
academic endurance.

Caffeine and
Memory Consolidation in Humans and reaction time
Erickson et al. (1985) hypothesized that, when beneficial to memory, caffeine might exert
its influence by affecting the efficiency of word list encoding. This hypothesis is supported by
Smith, Sturgess, and Gallagher's (1999) findings that caffeine improved performance on free
recall memory tasks when words were semantically encoded but had no effect on memory when
encoding was shallower or property-based.
Unlike memory, the positive effects of caffeine on attention and processing speed have
been more consistently documented in the literature. Across many studies, caffeine has been
shown to improve reaction time and attention (Mednick et aI., 2008). More specifically, in one
study, caffeine improved performance on choice reaction time tasks that involved attention and
categorical search (Smith et aI., 1999). Similarly, Warburton & Bersellini (2001) found a
significant decrease in reaction time and a significant increase in the number of correct
detections on an attention task when participants were given caffeine. Other studies have also
documented shorter reaction times and a faster recall rate when participants used caffeine (Eich
& Metcalfe, 1989).

Materials
1. Caffeinated beverages
 2. Memory card matching game
3. Historical books

Methodology
1. Gather 40 participants to participate in the experiment whose age is between 17 to 25.
2. All participants will be asked to estimate the number of cups of coffee, tea, sodas,
sports/energy drinks, and chocolate bars they consumed weekly.
3. Participants will be divided into two groups.
4. Both groups are going to take 2 tasks regarding memory consolidation and reading
endurance.
5. Only those who consumed at least a moderate amount of caffeine are assigned to
consume caffeinated beverages the night before taking those tasks.
6. The first task is to play a memory card matching game. By shuffling 25 pairs of picture
cards and laying them on the table, participants are allowed to look at and memorize the
position of each pair for 15 seconds. On each turn, a player turns over any two cards (one
at a time) and keeps them if the cards match (for instance, two kings). The objective of
this task is to determine how many trials they’ve tried until they finished the task.
7. The second task is to let them read historical books as long as they can to measure their
reading endurance. During that time, we will record the time and conduct a test to ensure
that they read effectively.
8. Collect the information and results from the experiment.
9. Compare the results from both groups.
10. Make a conclusion

References
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4. Eich, E., & Metcalfe, J. (1989). Mood dependent memory for internal versus external
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https://www.eurekaselect.com/126862/article
https://annals-ashkmdc.org/oldsite/pdfs/2017/3/6.pdf
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26899133/