An unexpected feature of the elbow room scholarly person sit down their exam in may have an impact on their results , new inquiry has find oneself : a high roof .

in the main in shoal and higher education , students are teach in pocket-sized room or lecture halls and study alone in normal - sized rooms . But get along exam sidereal day , due to the gamey intensity of people taking exams at the end of a year , students are put in large rooms such as gymnasiums for their terminal tests .

While this may make good sense from a toll and logistics point of vista , late enquiry has suggested that room with gamey ceiling can bear upon brain activity associated with concentration . Researchers from the University of South Australia and Deakin University looked into this core by looking at real - macrocosm data , taken from 15,400 undergraduate students across three campuses at an Australian university between 2011 and 2019 , and the ceiling height of the room where they took their exams .

Accounting for broker such as coursework scores , bookman ' eld , the time of year , the field of study studied , and whether the bookman had take exams on it before , the squad found that there was a far-famed difference in performance between students model in elbow room with normal and high ceiling .

“ These spaces are often designed for design other than examinations , such as gymnasiums , exhibitions , event and performances , ” Dr Isabella Bower , leading author of the paper , said in astatement . “ The key point is that large rooms with high ceilings seem to disfavor students and we need to realize what brain mechanisms are at romp , and whether this dissemble all students to the same degree . ”

It is unclear from this research alone what caused the poorer operation of bookman in elbow room with high ceilings .

" A primal constraint of this naturalistic retrospective bailiwick is that we are unable to probe whether the observed result is direct result of the design quality of scale leaf , or if differences arise because of the indoor environmental parameters afforded by the scale , " the team write in their paper . " For instance , as enlarged gymnasium spaces are often poorly isolate and are expensive to clime control , the observed burden may be due to lower ambient temperature on the students , which has been shown to reduce cognitive function in young grownup . "

Other factors could admit strangeness with the exam elbow room , and the crowding of such rooms . Cognitive carrying into action has been shown to minify in crowded spaces , for example .

" finally , the smaller room scale may allow students more opportunity to chouse , " the squad continue . " While the proctor to student ratio is far higher , the student - to - student ratio is low reducing peer surveillance and monitoring which may regulate if a student wander by smuggling in note . "

However , though we do not know the mechanism , room sizing does appear to be a fond cistron . Previousresearchby the squad place participant in VR environments which change the sizing of the virtual " room " they were place in , while electroencephalography ( EEG ) commemorate the reaction in their brains , finding that mental capacity activity involved in concentration on difficult tasks increased as player sat in the larger virtual room . The research could top to improvements in examinations and testing .

" In Australia , many universities and schools use big indoor spaces for exams to streamline logistics and cost . It ’s crucial to recognize the potential shock of the physical surroundings on student performance and make necessary adjustments to ensure all bookman have an adequate chance to succeed , " Bower supply .

“ These finding will appropriate us to better design the buildings in which we live and work , so we can perform to the respectable of our ability . ”

The study is write in theJournal of Environmental Psychology .