Our general topic is the effect of arousal on cognitive performance. As you will remember, in the Week 2 tutorial, you were asked to join one of three groups in your tutorial: one group air cycled for 1 minute, one group air cycled for 3 minutes, and the final group did not air cycle. Exercise changes arousal levels and so we have three arousal groups: no exercise = low arousal, 1-minute exercise = moderate arousal, and 3-minutes exercise = high arousal.
Cognitive performance is measured via a letter-detection task. You were asked to read through several pages of a research article for 2 minutes and to circle every letter ‘i’ that you found. The more letters that you found within that time, the faster you were processing the information and the better your cognitive performance.
In your lab report, you should develop specific hypotheses about how arousal is expected to affect cognitive performance as measured with the letter-detection task. You have been given a starter article, Lambourne and Tomporowski (2010), which introduces arousal theory and will help to further set the scene.
additional details can be provided upon request