Was the study time allocation based on expectation-maximization in value-test likelihood tradeoff situation?

Abstract

When preparing for entrance exams, learners often face limited study time and need to allocate it by making trade-offs among items with varying combinations of scores and test likelihoods. This study explored how learners allocate study time under time constraints by establishing a trade-off situation with three types of items: low score-high test likelihood, high score-low likelihood, and medium score-medium likelihood. The learners needed to allocate study time to the items. Experiment 1 found that participants allocated the most study time to medium score-medium likelihood items rather than to those with the highest scores or likelihood. They also allocated equal time to low score-high likelihood and high score-low likelihood items despite their differing expected scores. It suggests that under short time constraints, learners did not rely solely on expected scores to allocate study time. In actual learning processes, the influence of difficulty cannot be overlooked. Therefore, Experiment 2 examined whether item difficulty affected the allocation strategy. Results indicated that even with varying difficulty levels, learners did not base their decisions entirely on expected scores. To rule out the possibility that the 5-second time constraint was too short to allocate study time based on expected utility, Experiment 3 extended the study time but found that learners still did not allocate time according to expected utility under longer time constraints. It suggests that learners consider both scores and test likelihoods; however, their allocation process is not completely based on the expected scores. These findings contradict the expected utility theory.