دانلود رایگان مقاله تاثیر زمان بین وظایف شناختی بر عملکرد

Abstract

Students are often required to perform several mental tasks in a short period of time, and their performance is likely to depend on how closely the tasks are scheduled. We examine this phenomenon in a particular context: Advanced Placement (AP) exams in the United States. We exploit variation in the AP exam schedule from year to year which results in a student who takes two exams in one year having more or less time between the exams than a student who takes the same two exams in a different year. We find evidence that more time between exams results in higher scores, particularly on the second exam, and that this effect varies across different types of students. Our estimates suggest that a student taking two exams ten days apart is 6–8% more likely to pass them both than a student taking the same exams only one day apart.

4. Conclusions

We use data on AP exam scores to estimate how the number of days between exams affects student performance. We find that a student who takes two exams does significantly better when they are further apart and show that this relationship is approximately linear within the range of our data (0–11 days). Some subgroups (e.g. females, Asians) are more sensitive to time between exams than others. Finally, most of the effect is concentrated on the second exam. One could imagine various mechanisms for why more time between exams leads to better outcomes. For example, one possible explanation for our results is simple fatigue. Taking an AP exam is mentally and physically exhausting and it may be difficult to perform at peak ability when taking two exams in close succession. Another possible explanation is that last-minute preparation for exams (“cramming”) is important and more difficult when exams are close together. A third and related mechanism is that when exams are close together, students foresee their possible fatigue or lack of cramming time, and preemptively allocate their energies to just one exam. Our data do not allow us to identify a specific mechanism behind our findings, but may provide some clues. For example, we find that the detrimental effect of temporally proximal exams is primarily associated with the second exam taken. Our fatigue mechanism predicts this effect. The cramming mechanism may also predict this effect, but not so directly. For example, if two exams are close together and a student has to do last-minute cramming for both exams at the same time, this could arguably affect both the first and the second test score. Thus, this evidence is suggestive of fatigue, but cannot rule out a cramming effect. On the other hand, the heterogeneity that we find across test takers is more suggestive in our minds of a cramming effect. Unless one thinks that fatigue operates differently across gender and race, the heterogeneities that we find seem to be more easily explained by which groups are more likely to engage in last minute preparation.