Allocation of Study Time in Chinese Junior School Students: Habitual Responding, Item Difficulty, and Time Constraints.

Fuyun Wang,Yanju Jiang,Qiwen Qin

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00639

Abstract

The present study investigated factors influencing Chinese junior school students’ study time allocation and the age difference in the effect of habitual responding. Participants were 240 junior school students (120 girls, 120 boys; aged 13–15 years) with half taking part in Experiment 1 and half in Experiment 2, and 240 young adults aged 18–23 years, (120 women and 120 men,) involved in Experiments 3a and 3b, all native Chinese speakers. In Experiments 1 and 3a, Chinese word pairs (e.g., moon–star) were presented on the screen with three items in one array. In each trial, the items were arranged from left to right, either easy, moderate, then difficult, or the reverse. Participants had either 5 s or no time limits to study the word pairs. In Experiments 2 and 3b, word pairs were ordered in a column with the easiest items either at the top or bottom position. Results showed interactions among item difficulty, item order, and time limitation in terms of effects on study time allocation of junior school students. Participants tended to learn the items in order (from left to right and from top to bottom), but the effect of item difficulty was greater than that of item order on item selection. Results indicated that agenda and habitual responding have a combined effect on study time allocation and that the contribution of agenda is greater than that of habitual responding. The effect of habitual responding on the self-paced study and recall performance of junior school students is greater than its effect on young adults, and the study time allocation of junior school students is more likely to be affected by external conditions.

Highlights

Study time allocation is a core aspect of metacognitive control
Recall Performance We examined recall performance to determine the effect of study time allocation
The results indicated that item difficulty and time constraint jointly affect recall performance, and that item order has no effect on recall performance

Summary

Introduction

Study time allocation is a core aspect of metacognitive control It refers to the process whereby learners allocate their own subjective effort and attention, and it reflects the individual’s ability to understand the learning task and to choose how to engage with it (Perfect and Schwartz, 2002). It is an important part of self-regulated study, and how people allocate learning time has been the focus of research on study time allocation. When people are given a very short amount of time, they tend to spend more time on easy items than on difficult items in order to achieve good test results To explain this phenomenon, Metcalfe (2002) put forward the RPL framework. This is so if learners do not have enough time and ability to master the most difficult items; in this situation, they tend to defer their study of the difficult items in order to review the easy items

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion