Blame the exam room ceiling for your bad grades

Taking an exam in a gym or auditorium, where many university exams are held, could lower your grade, a new study suggests. After finding that simply being in a large room triggered brain activity associated with focusing on a difficult task, researchers set out to explore how large spaces could affect cognitive performance, Newswise reports. They compared the exam scores of 15,400 undergraduate psychology students from a single Australian university who were tested in different rooms on three campuses from 2011 to 2019. They looked at floor size, ceiling height, as well as students’ course grades, exam-taking experience and other variables.

Course grades were a significant predictor of exam grades, not surprisingly. But ceiling height was also a significant predictor, even after controlling for other factors, according to the study published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology“This suggests that study habits matter, but so does the size of the room you’re taking the exam in,” the researchers write in The Conversation. They speculate that it could be related to temperature and air circulation, as previous research shows that temperature has an effect on cognitive performance. It’s also possible that our brains are primed to view large spaces as suitable for social gatherings, but not necessarily for moments of intense concentration.

“The bottom line is that large rooms with high ceilings appear to disadvantage students, and we need to understand what brain mechanisms are at play, and whether this affects all students to the same degree,” study lead author Dr. Isabella Bower of the University of South Australia told Newswise. “It’s crucial to recognize the potential impact of the physical environment on student performance and make adjustments as needed to ensure all students have an equal chance of success,” study author Dr. Jaclyn Broadbent of Deakin University added. The researchers plan to do more work in this area and eventually develop psychological guidelines for use in building design. (More student stories.)