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bolido_sentimental  1yr ago (text post)   3350 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 25, 2022

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Is there such a thing as taking tests fast or slow, separate from actual score? Throughout my academic career I finished every test I ever took freakishly fast, like everyone else is working and I'm sitting there for half an hour. This did not correlate with how in or others did on the test, if I tried to go back and change answers or edit I was as likely to score lower as higher. Friends who scored the same as me, consistently, took more time to finish.

Normally test taking speed correlates with intelligence, but it always felt like something else there.

There's no good reason you should do worse after going back and reviewing answers. More time to think should always be better, ceteris paribus. The only explanation I can think of would be if you're biased toward assuming your initial answer was wrong (e.g. because you doubt your own intelligence or doubt your test taking abilities) and so you consistently talk yourself into changing answers you shouldn't change.

What I found when studying for LSAT was that frequently I changed an answer from correct to incorrect when I went back. Typically after a section there were 2-3 I was unsure of.

I developed a rule that I would only change the answer if I could construct basically a logical statement that proves another answer was correct. When that happened changes were generally from incorrect to correct.

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