fairfolio
Saved Projects

A Catchy Bug

CSEF · 2019 Behavioral & Social Sciences Second Award

Ayla C. Richland · Pressman (Rabbi Jacob) Academy, Los Angeles, Los Angeles County

Overview

Objectives The objective of this experiment is to determine if side of brain dominance effects how often one experiences earworms. Methods Forty-six middle school students were asked to complete the "Involuntary Musical Imagery Scale (IMIS) questionnaire, developed by G. A., Floridou, V .J. Williamson, L., Stewart, and Müllensiefen from Goldsmiths University (https://www.gold.ac.uk/media/documents-by-section/departments/psychology/ IMIS-pen-&-paper-version-&-scoring-info.pdf). They then completed an online brain dominance test developed by Eterna, a company specializing in biofeedback technologies (http://www.ipn.at/ipn.asp? BHX3325185944214006). The results of both assessments were compared to determine if there was any correlation between the degree of an individual's brain dominance and the frequency in which they experienced earworms. Results Scores from the IMIS assessment (earworm susceptibility ranges from 6 (highest susceptibility) to 0 (lowest susceptibility) among right brain dominant individuals: 17.6% scored a 6, 70.5% scored 5 or more, 94% scored 4 or more, and 100% scored 3 or more. Among left brain dominant individuals: 14.8% scored a 6, 37% scored 5 or more, 55.5% scored 4 or more, 77.7% scored 3 or more. and 22.2% scored less than 3. Among individuals without a dominant side of the brain: 50% scored a 5 and 100% scored a 4 or more. A scatter plot diagram of the collected data showed that right-brain dominant subjects consistently scored at least a 3 on the earworm susceptibility score. Conclusions The data showed that if one is right-brain dominant, then earworms are more likely to occur. Conversely, if an individual is left-brain dominant, they don t experience earworms nearly as consistently.

Summary statement

My experiment proved that there is a correlation between brain hemispheric dominance and earworm frequency.

Help received

My mom helped me edit and type my report and design my board. Dr. Jakubowski provided me a link to an earworm questionnaire to use for my experiment. Mr Hartung, my science teacher, helped me with my documents and answered my numerous questions.

Awards (1)

Competition history

  • CSEF 2019 Behavioral & Social Sciences · Entry J0418

Resources

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

Source: California Science & Engineering Fair public projects

Save projects to your library

Sign in with Google to keep track of projects you find interesting, organized into folders. An account also raises your daily allowance for “Has this been done?”, and lets you create a key for the MCP server with a much higher limit than anonymous use. Browsing stays public.

Continue with Google