Speaker’s bio: Dr. Tony So is a behavioural economist by training and has published in Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Journal of Economic Psychology and Journal of Behavioural and Experimental Economics.  His research interests are wide, currently working on topics related to education, food preferences and AI.

Abstract: This paper examines whether performance decreases when students experience time pressure during an exam. To facilitate the identification of time pressure and to distinguish from other effects that increase with elapsed time, we define the notion of progress-dependent time pressure as the amount of time a student has left remaining to complete the remaining questions in an exam. Extracting system log data from the learning management system, we find that questions are answered less correctly when students face time pressure. Such choking effect is asymmetric, students perform worse as they have a larger time deficit, but having a larger time surplus does not significantly affect their performance. We further find that choking under time pressure can explain 17% of the variance in students’ marks, suggesting that a large proportion of student exam scores measure factors other than a student’s underlying ability. Our study supports policies at some universities to implement looser time limits in examinations.