Chewing gum has been shown, in a scientific experiment, to increase visual spatial memory ability. Expanding on this study, we sought an answer to gum’s effect on auditory recall. Chewing has been shown to relieve stress, because the Hippocampus of the brain, which regulates stress hormones in the body, also stores short-term memory. If the level of stress hormones becomes too high in this area, it can cause permanent damage to the short-term memory; chewing lowers the hormone levels decreasing the chance of damage. We hypothesized that the effect of sugarless chewing gum would be consistent on auditory memory as well, and would improve the capacity to remember words.

In our research, we tested 140 subjects, ten of each gender in grades six through twelve. We had the subject listen in headphones, to a list of 14, two-syllable common words. At the end of the test, the subject would wait five seconds, and then was asked to repeat as many as he could remember, in a time period of 30 seconds. Then a second test was administered, which was similar to the first. Before the second test, the subject was asked to chew a piece of Wrigley’s Sugarfree Peppermint gum and to continue chewing as they listened to a second list of words. At the end of the words, the subject remembered as many as possible.

Our experiments have shown that chewing gum improved the memory of our subjects by 15%. The older subjects who were in Upper School, 20% improvement, did twice as well as the Middle School children, who gum helped by 10%. There was no significant difference between the genders though.

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