Does Chewing Gum While Studying Help Exam Performance?

Here at 300Hours, we share lots of tips on how to improve your finance exam performance, all neatly packaged in our ‘Study Motivation’ section.

Here’s an interesting recent tip that our team discovered: chewing gum while studying for your finance exam, and during the exam itself, can help with your performance. 

Just to be clear, we’re not talking “chew gum and you’ll not need to study ever” levels of performance improvement, by the way. But it helps – kind of like shark-skin suits for Olympic swimmers. Every little bit helps, and chewing gum seems to do that.

Here are our findings, and how you can use this to help your exam preparations.

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Chewing makes your memory more awesome

A study from the University of Northumbria have discovered that people who chewed throughout tests of both long-term and short-term memory produced significantly better scores than people who did not.

The results provide the first ever evidence that chewing activity improves both long-term and working memory, and collaborates with research done by others – but it’s not clear exactly how it works.

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Chewing activates your brain and delivers more oxygen to it

A possible explanation for this is that chewing increases activity in parts of your brain related to memory.

Japanese researchers have shown that brain activity in the hippocampus, an area important for memory, increases while people chew. 

Chewing also increases your heart rate, and therefore increases oxygen delivery to your brain, enhancing its overall performance.

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Chewing gum while studying also improves concentration

Chewing gum has also been discovered to help you stay focused for longer on tasks that require continuous monitoring.

A study by Cardiff University involved 38 participants being split in to two groups. Both groups completed a 30 minute audio task that involved listening to a list of numbers from 1-9 being read out in a random manner.

Participants were scored on how accurately and quickly they were able to detect a sequence of odd-even-odd numbers, such as 7-2-1.  Participants also completed questionnaires on their mood both before and after the task.

The results showed that participants who chewed gum had quicker reaction times and more accurate results than the participants who didn’t chew gum. This was especially the case towards the latter parts of the task.

Interestingly participants who didn’t chew gum performed slightly better at the beginning of the task but were overtaken by the end. This suggests that chewing gum helps us focus on tasks that require continuous monitoring over a longer amount of time.

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So what should you do to help your exam preparation?

Make chewing gum while studying a habit

While studying for your finance exams, make sure you have a stash of gum handy.

Some of you may not be natural gum-chewers, but remember everything helps, plus the sugar-free versions are good for your teeth too!

Chew gum during the actual exam

If you’ve had a look at our CFA exam day checklist, you’ll see that although the CFA Institute is pretty strict on items allowed into the exam hall, you can bring sweets and chewing gum with you.

Use this to your advantage!

Stick to the same flavor

Much like humming the same kind of music you listened to while studying will help jog your memory in the actual exam, do make sure that you use the same chewing gum flavor – this will help your concentration and memory on the actual day.

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Do you use chewing gum while studying? How do you find it? Share you favorite gum recommendations with us in the comment below!

Meanwhile, here are some related articles that may be of interest:

• How To Focus When Studying, Even When You’re Tired
• 18 Actionable Ways To Improve Memory For Studying [CFA Exam Edition]
• How to Use Coffee Productively for Your CFA Exam Studies
• How to Study Effectively: Proven Techniques That Work for Finance Exams
• How to Sleep Better, Be More Alert and Maintain Study Focus