Daylight Saving Said to Affect SAT Scores
Image by Alan Cleaver
How students perform on the SAT may have something to do with Daylight Saving, ScienceNOW reports.
The idea is that resetting clocks by “springing forward” and “falling back” can upset sleep patterns and with them the ability to concentrate. Researchers write in the Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology and Economics that they found a “surprisingly strong negative relationship between imposition of the time policy in a geographic area and SAT scores of local high school students,” according to the abstract.
Using data from Indiana, where until recently individual counties could opt in or out of daylight saving, researchers found that scores in counties that changed their clocks were consistently 16.34 points – or 2 percent – lower than in counties that did not, they write in the Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Economics. That may not sound like a lot, but it may be enough to keep students out of their top choice for school. ScienceNow advises students to “choose your test dates carefully.”
Filed under: K-12 Education News
Tags: Research on Learning, Testing
