The Impact Of Material Position, Material Difficulty And Time Limitation On Allocation Of Study Time In Junior School Students

Study time allocation is an important index of meta-cognition control, and the study of allocationof study time can greatly promote the study of meta-cognition. How do earners allocate study time? Toanswer this question, researchers have conducted a lot of researches and put forward four importanttheoretical models, Discrepancy Reduction Model, Hierarchical Model of Self-regulation study, Region ofProximal Learning Model, Agenda-Based Regulation (ABR model). The four models researchers haveproposed can explain how learners allocate study time under certain conditions. This study is to continueABR model to further explore the interaction between agenda and habitual process in the agenda-basedregulation model.This study selected junior school students as the research subjects and summed up thecharacteristics of junior school students on allocation of study time to provide the basis for allocating thestudy time effectively.Using experimental method as research method and the word pairs of different difficulty levels asexperimental material, this dissertation selected240students in grade2in junior high school. Using theexperimental paradigm of Dunlosky, We design two experiments in this study. In experiment I, weemployed a mixed design three factors, i.e.3(item difficulty: easy, moderately difficult, difficult)×2(itemorder: easy on the left vs. difficult on the left)×2(time allowed:5s vs.60s) to investigate the characteristicsof junior school students on allocation of study time in the item order from left to right. In experiment II,we use the same design as experiment I to investigate the characteristics of junior school students onallocation of study time in the item order from top to bottom.The results are as follows:1. Junior school students inclined to learn the material from left to right and from top to bottom.Subjects prefer to choose the learning order according to the material position in vertical array than in levelarray.2. Junior school students prefer a large percentage of easy material than difficult material whenthe easy or difficult materials are in the priority of reading habits (on the left or on the top).3. Junior school students’ tendency of preference of easy materials is increasing in shorty time limit. In long time limit, junior school students inclined to learn the material from left to right and from topto bottom.4. Junior school students spent shortest time on the easy materials and spent longest time on thedifficult materials in EMD group. The time they spent on medium difficulty materials is equal to difficultmaterials or larger than difficult materials in DME group.5. Junior school students spent shortest time on the easy materials and spent longest time on themedium difficulty materials in shorty time limit. They spent shortest time on the easy materials and thedifference of time spending between medium difficulty materials and difficult materials are not significant.6. On the short time limitation, junior school students have the highest test accuracy on all thematerials in DME group than in EMD group under the location of the material which from left to right. Onthe long time limitaiton, junior school students have the highest test accuracy on the difficult materials inDME group than in EMD group under the location of the material which from left to right. The differenceof test accuracy which the junior have among all materials is not significant under the location of thematerial which from top to bottom.7. Junior school students have the highest test accuracy on easy materials and the lowest testaccuracy on difficult materials.8. Junior school students are more easily affected by material position than adults.