Variations journalières de l'activité intellectuelle d'enfants de 10-11 ans en fonction de conditions psychosociologiques de passation d'épreuves

Abstract

Summary : Influence of test protocol on diurnal intellectual activity of 10-to 11-year-old pupils. Two studies investigated if test protocol (individual or group testing) changes the level of performance in school and psychotechnical tests and/or influences diurnal patterns of test performance (rhythmicity). Mathematical problems, number cancellation and a spatial structuration (blocks) test were administered four times in individual or group situations at 08:45, 11:45, 13:45, and 16:15. For the two experiments, the population samples were respectivily composed of 32 and 20 ten-to eleven-year-old pupils. The first experiment showed an influence of test protocol on performance for the cancellation test and intellectual rhythmicity for the cancellation and spatial structuration tests. The results of the first experiment were confirmed in the second experiment. An influence of the test protocol was linked to the nature of the task. There was little influence of gender. During the group testing situation we found better performance on the cancellation task and during the individual testing situation performance on the structuration test was improved. We observed a disappearance (cancellation) or an inversion (blocks) in diurnal variation between the group and individual testing situations. Key words : mental activity, pupils, diurnal variations, test protocol.