Responding or abandoning test items under time limits
Abstract
Two experiments were performed to study the influence of item difficulty and availability of time, or deadline, to produce a response, on the decision to abandon or answer verbal analogies of the form A:B::C: with four alternative choices. In the first experiment, 47 undergraduates were presented with 144 verbal analogies at three levels of difficulty. Each item was presented individually and the deadline to produce an outcome was specified by the instructions. The probability to abandon the analogy increased with the item's difficulty and decreased with longer deadlines. If a subject did not abandon, the probability of a correct answer depended upon item difficulty. The average time for abandoning the item was longer with longer deadlines, but was not influenced by the item's difficulty. The average time for a response (correct or incorrect) increased with the item's difficulty and with longer deadlines. In the second experiment, 48 undergraduates were presented with 48 "tests" of three verbal analogies each. Each test contained items at three different levels of difficulty, and the deadline was given for the whole test. The results showed that the subject's perception of a deadline to produce an answer was not influenced by external indicators of the time available for each item. The subjects, on average, invested a similar amount of time on each item. Still, the probability to abandon an item increased with the item's difficulty, but the average time for an abandon was not influenced by either difficulty or deadline. The average time for a response (correct or incorrect) was mainly an increasing function of the item's difficulty. Logistic models for the probability of an abandon and a correct answer given that the item was not abandoned are proposed, together with log-normal models for the response times.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Schweickert, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Psychology|Experiments|Psychological tests
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