The Characteristics Of Time Allocation For Junior High School Students: The Perspective Of Time Mental Account

Most of the psychological studies have focused on the mental accounting of money,but the few have explored the other research fields of mental accounting.Mental accounting of time is related to time allocation which has typical age characteristics.The stage of junior high school is a period of rapid development of adolescents' physiology and psychology.Therefore,time management played a key role in the academic performance of teenagers.Based on the analysis above,this research attempt to study the characteristics of time distribution of junior high school students with the perspective of time mental accounting.In Study 1,contextual experiments were used to searching the influence of grades and academic performances to the time distribution of junior high school students,and then the effects of duration types(1 hour and 3 hours)and context situations(learning situation and leisure situation)on the time mental accounting of junior high school students were discussed.The study found that:(1)There was a significant difference in the proportion of time spent on activities between different students in grades.The proportion of the third and second grades assigned to the learning time was significantly higher than that of the first grade,and assigned to the leisure time was significantly less than that of the first grade.(2)There was a significant difference in the proportion of time spent on activities between different students in levels of academic performances.Within the three grades,the students whose academic performance in top 27% on their own grades assigned the more time on learning activities than the students whose academic performance in bottom 27% on their own grades.(3)The time source account was matched with the target account of allocating in junior high school students.Specifically,the distribution of learning time in learning context was much more than in leisure context,the distribution of leisure time in leisure context was much more than in learning context.The percentage of time allocated to learning activities decreased by an hour to three hours,and the proportion of time allocated to leisure activities increased.In Study 2,the implicit mechanism of the time mental accounting in junior high school students was explored with the implicit association test(IAT).The study found that: Implicit cognitive association matched between time source and activity types in junior high school students,in other words,when time source and activity types were consistent,the RT was shorter.Study 3 revealed the relationships,which were between time mental accounting,time management disposition and academic procrastination with the method of questionnaire.(1)There was a significant positive correlation between mental accounting of time and time management disposition,and they had a significant negative correlation with academic procrastination.(2)Mental accounting of time negatively predicted academic procrastination through time management disposition.In conclusion,(1)The grades and academic performances influenced the time distribution in junior high school students.(2)Duration types and context situations affected the time distribution in junior high school students.(3)Implicit cognitive association matched between time source and activity type.(4)Mental accounting of time affected academic delay through time management disposition.