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

Abstract

Previous studies have shown that the prospect of a resit opportunity lowers hypothetical study-time investments for a first exam, as compared to a singlechance exam (i.e., the resit effect). The present paper describes a first experiment in which we aimed to generalize this effect from hypothetical study-time investments to a learning task allowing for the optimization of actual study-time investments while participants studied pairs of pseudowords for a subsequent multiple-choice test, given either a single chance or two chances to pass. Against our expectations, the results of the experiment showed no resit effect for the amount of actual time participants spent studying the materials in the experimental learning task. To better allow for the optimization of study-time investments, the learning task was adapted for a second experiment to include an indication of passing probability. These results, however, also did not show a resit effect. A third experiment addressed whether it was the investment of actual time that led to this absence of a resit effect with the learning task. The results suggested, however, that it was most likely the lack of a priori deliberation that caused this absence of the effect. Taken together with findings from a fourth questionnaire study showing that students seem to take a resit prospect into account by indicating they would have studied more for an exam if the option to resit would not have been available, these findings lead us to argue that a resit prospect may primarily affect advance study-time allocation decisions.

The Psychology of Resit Exams

“…Alternatively, if the lack of an a priori, deliberated study-time investment decision was what led to a lack of resit effect in the PAL task, as suggested previously (Experiments 1 and 2 from Nijenkamp et al, 2021), we expect to observe a resit effect in the delayed-feedback condition. Furthermore, we expect any resit effects to be positively correlated with a participant's CRT score (Toplak et al, 2014).…”

“…We hypothesize that in the immediate-feedback condition we will observe the resit effect as previously found under identical conditions in the study-time investment task . With regards to the delayed-feedback condition, we hypothesize there will be no resit effect if the PAL task revealed no resit effect due to the higher investment costs associated with the 'real', rather than hypothetical, investments (Experiments 1 and 2 from Nijenkamp et al, 2021).…”

“…Importantly, however, more recent work suggests that the resit effect does not generalize to a task that involves actual studying of materials for a test, as opposed to merely deciding how much hypothetical time one would be willing to invest to pass a test (Experiments 1 and 2 from Nijenkamp et al, 2021). In this work, the participants completed a Paired Associates Learning (PAL) task for which they had to study pseudo words and make short multiple-choice tests.…”

“…The fact that the resit effect was observed with the study-time investment task , but not in the PAL task (Experiments 1 and 2 from Nijenkamp et al, 2021) raises the question of why this is the case, especially since the PAL task was carefully designed to allow participants to follow a similar optimization approach as in the study-time investment task. Two possible differences between the tasks could underlie the discrepancy in the presence of a resit effect.…”

“…In contrast, the study-time investment task only asked for an a priori decision with time for deliberation on the amount of hypothetical study time the participant would like to invest to have a certain probability of passing an exam, akin to making an advance study-time planning. Given the fact that the study-time investment task produced robust resit effects under differing conditions, combined with the fact that students do seem to take the prospect of a resit exam into account in their advance planning of study-time investments (Questionnaire Study from Nijenkamp et al, 2021), the lack of a priori deliberation on the studytime investment decision in the PAL task could indeed be what underlies the absence of a resit effect in that task.…”