Download Ice Ice Baby: Effects of Temperature on Typing Speed

Ice Ice Baby: Effects of Temperature on Typing Speed
Background and Significance
Discussion
• Immersion of a body part in cold water can cause neuromuscular fatigue 1. Neuromuscular fatigue is the decrease in muscle
output caused by a continuous amount of force 2.
• Nerve conduction velocity is influenced by nerve temperature in peripheral nerve fibers 3.
• Temperature may affect the activation of the muscle in use can result in muscle potentiation which is characterized by
increase in twitch force and decrease in contraction and half relaxations time 4 .
• When cooling the skin, heat is lost, which can lead to vasoconstriction, which can increase blood pressure and reduces blood
flow to extremities. This can lead to the loss in motor function, which will directly affect typing speed.
Methods
Results
Initial typing speed for participants
was taken for 1 minute using 10 fast
fingers typing program and the words
per minute and typing accuracy was
recorded.
The majority of participants increased their typing
speed after putting their hands in the cold water.
After performing a two-tailed, two sampled T-Test
on the average typing speeds, our p-value was
0.74166.
With a significance value of 0.05, the data was not
statistically significant, and we fail to reject the null
hypothesis.
Participants had practice from first typing test and
may have been more inclined to type faster and beat
their score for the second test.
Our data may not have supported our hypothesis due
to only putting the hands in the ice water. There are
muscles within the forearm that also control the
hand.
Next, participants submerge
their hands in ice water at
approximately 10 degrees
Celsius for 30 seconds.
After the 30 second
submersion, 15 seconds were
taken to begin typing program
again for 1 minute. The data
was again recorded.
After all data was collected, a 2
tailed, 2 sample T-test was
performed.
Alec Johnson, Bradley Kruger, Erika Olson Spring 2016
References
Figure 1: Average Typing Speed (WPM). The average words per minute for
each individual was taken while their hands were at room temperature.
After cold water immersion, the average words per minute was taken for
each individual. The standard deviation before cold water immersion was
20.35 and after cold water immersion was 19.86. (n=39)
1. Gossen, E., Allingham, K., & Sale, D. (2001). Effect of temperature on post-tetanic potentiation in
human dorsiflexor muscles. Canadian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology, 79(1), 49-58.
2. Peiffer, J., Abbiss, C., Watson, G., Nosaka, K., & Laursen, P. (2009). Effect of cold-water immersion
duration on body temperature and muscle function. Journal of Sports Sciences, 27(10), 987-993.
3. Sandén, Helena, Edblom, Micael, Hagberg, Mats, & Wallin, B. Gunnar. (2005). Bicycle ergometer
test to obtain adequate skin temperature when measuring nerve conduction velocity. Clinical
Neurophysiology, 116(1), 25-27.
4. Kim, J., & Johnson, H. (2014). Fatigue development in the finger flexor muscle differs between
keyboard and mouse use. European Journal of Applied Physiology, 114(12), 2469-2482.