The Effects Of Item Prossibility Of Test And Reward On Allocation Of Study Time

Allocation of study time is one of the important component of metacognition control, it refers to learners managing and controlling their psychological resource during the process of learning. How to allocate the study time indicate the level of learner’s self-regulation and the efficient of learning. According to the mechanism of allocation of study time, previous studies have proposed the discrepancy-reduction model, hierarchical model of self-regulated study, region of proximal learning model, agenda-based regulation. Each model has differences and mutual complementations. In order to further explain the mechanism of allocation of study time and theory of weighing, we set two variables to investigate their impact to allocation of study time, those are the words’s value and the possibility of tests.In experiment la, we adopted Metcalfe’s paradigm.30college students taken as participants, used computer to show high-reward difficult, low-reward difficult, high reward easy, low-reward easy items on each screen to Investigate how learners allocated their study time.In experiment lb, we adopted Metcalfe’s paradigm.30college students taken as participants, used computer to show high-like hood difficult, low-likelihood difficult, high-likelihood easy, low-likelihood easy items on each screen on each screen to Investigate how learners allocated their study time.In experiment2, we adopted Metcalfe’s paradigm.31college students taken as participants, used computer to show high reward-high likelihood,high reward-high likelihood, low reward-high likelihood、low reward-low likelihood items on each screen on each screen to Investigate how learners allocated their study time.The results are as follow:First, under the difficulty and value of items situation, participants selected easy items, spent more time on difficult and high value items.Second, under the difficulty and possibilities of test situation, participants preferentially selected easy or high possibility of test items, spent more time on difficult and high possibility of test items.Third, under the value and possibilities of test situation, participants preferentially selected high value or high possibility of testing items, only in the case of high score learners are sensitive to possibility of test, participants spent more time on difficult and high possibility of test items.Fourth, learners will be weighing various factors to make effective learning time allocation decisions. The internal mechanism of allocation of study time is a process of weighting the related factors of target, but also the study reflects the irrationality in local, earnings are not in proportion with the time allocated to the items awarded low earnings. It suggests that the learner’s decision is "limited rational decision".