Controlling the Resit Effect by Means of Investment Depreciation

Abstract

In accordance with a rational model of study-time investment, we previously found that the prospect of a resit exam leads to lower investments of fictional study-time for a first exam opportunity in an investment game utilizing simulated exams. In the current study, we investigated whether the depreciation of one’s first-exam investment reduces the resit effect. Specifically, we investigated study-time investments for a simulated multiple-choice exam in which 0, 50, or 100% of the initial study-time investment was lost before the resit exam. In accordance with our predictions, we found that the magnitude of the resit effect decreased as investment depreciation increased. This finding suggests that the negative effect of resit exams on study-time investment may be countered by creating conditions under which investment depreciation (i.e. forgetting) is expected to occur, for instance, by increasing the temporal interval between the first attempt and resit exam.

Second Chances in Learning: Does a Resit Prospect Lower Study-Time Investments on a First Test?

“…With Experiment 3 we aimed to assess whether the investment of actual time, rather than merely hypothetical time, would reduce the magnitude of the resit effect (see Nijenkamp et al, 2016) to such a degree that it would be absent, or at the very least reduced in magnitude. Using Bayesian analyses, we replicated the resit effect reported in previous studies using the study-time investment paradigm with hypothetical time investments (i.e., immediate feedback; Nijenkamp et al, 2016Nijenkamp et al, , 2018. Furthermore, we also replicated the finding that the Nijenkamp et al DOI: 10.5334/joc.196 magnitude of the resit effect is correlated positively with a participant's CRT score, a measure of analytical/rational thinking (Nijenkamp et al, 2016; see also Toplak et al, 2014).…”

“…In previous studies using the study-time investment task (Nijenkamp et al, 2016(Nijenkamp et al, , 2018 the goal was to simply pass the test to receive a small monetary bonus and, to allow them to maximize this bonus, participants were provided with the information necessary to approximate the shifting optimal study-time investments due to a resit prospect. Since the PAL task used in the current experiment retained many of these features, we hypothesize that participants will invest less time studying the pseudoword pairs for a test if a resit is available.…”

“…An important consideration in interpreting the results of these earlier studies (Nijenkamp et al, 2016(Nijenkamp et al, , 2018 is that students, and especially rational students, are capable of using the available information about the relationship between study time and passing probability to maximize expected utility in the condition without resit opportunity. Moreover, these studies demonstrate students' cognitive abilities to appreciate and utilize the fact that the function relating overall expected utility to invested study time for the first exam is changed, often in quite subtle ways, by the availability of a resit opportunity under various resit policies and assumptions about the degrees of forgetting in between exams (for graphical illustrations of such changes, see Nijenkamp et al, 2016Nijenkamp et al, , 2018. This suggests that, at the very least, students must have appreciated the fact that availability of resit opportunities lowers the optimal amount of tobe-invested study time in the first attempt.…”

“…1 In recent work it has been found that the prospect of having a second chance to pass a simulated exam (i.e. a resit exam) indeed leads to a reduction of hypothetical study-time investment, as compared to only having a single chance to pass the simulated exam (Nijenkamp et al, 2016(Nijenkamp et al, , 2018. Since these studies found this effect with the investment of only hypothetical study time, and the fundamental psychological mechanisms underlying the effects of a resit prospect are not yet precisely known, it is paramount to establish whether a similar resit effect would occur in a task requiring the investment of actual time on learning materials for a subsequent test.…”

The Backup Planning Scale (BUPS): A Brief, Self-Reported Measure of a Person’s Tendency to Develop, Reserve, and Use Backup Plans

“…To use the above example, an applicant applying to multiple positions is more likely to be hired somewhere. Although backup plans are prudent components of many goal pursuits, emerging evidence suggests that backup plans can introduce unexpected costs into goal pursuits, and these costs can reduce one's chances to achieve a goal (Nijenkamp et al, 2018;Sharif & Shu, 2017;Shin & Milkman, 2016;Straub & Schmid, 2018).…”