Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden.
BMC Psychol. 2024 Sep 27;12(1):498. doi: 10.1186/s40359-024-01984-3.
While previous research has identified executive functions as predictors of academic performance in school children, similar studies conducted among adults show mixed results. One of the reasons given for executive functions having a limited effect on academic achievements in adulthood is that they are usually fully developed by that time. Since these executive functions are at their peak at that age, the individual differences in these as well as their influence on academic performance in adults are harder to trace. The paper describes a study conducted among 107 university students the goal of which was to find out whether there is any relationship between the adult students' inhibitory control values measured with the Stroop Test and their academic achievements. Although the results indicate a weak correlation between the Stroop Effect and the students' academic performance of low statistical significance, which seems to confirm the outcomes of the previous studies focusing on adults, the study reveals an unexpected statistically significant correlation between the students' grade averages and the number of their incorrect color identifications. This phenomenon appears to be worth pursuing in future research since it suggests the existence of another, relatively quickly measurable, variable possibly reflecting other predictors of academic performance in adults such as a degree of their manifested conscientiousness, their ability to concentrate on an assigned, relatively short, one-off task and their attitude to fulfilling this task. The Stroop Test, despite not being originally designed for this purpose, might thus be used as a simple tool suitable for providing information about these variables via the subject's number of color identification errors. Such information can subsequently inform the activities that educators may include in their curricula to foster conscientiousness and concentration in the students lacking these.
虽然之前的研究已经确定了执行功能是儿童在校学业成绩的预测因素，但在成年人中进行的类似研究结果却不一致。造成执行功能对成年人学业成绩影响有限的原因之一是，到那时它们通常已经充分发展。由于这些执行功能在那个年龄段达到顶峰，因此很难追踪这些功能的个体差异及其对成年人学业成绩的影响。本文描述了一项针对 107 名大学生的研究，目的是确定使用斯特鲁普测试测量的成年学生的抑制控制值与他们的学业成绩之间是否存在任何关系。尽管结果表明斯特鲁普效应与学生的学业成绩之间存在微弱的相关性，但统计意义上的相关性很低，这似乎证实了之前专注于成年人的研究结果，但研究还揭示了学生的平均成绩和他们错误颜色识别的数量之间存在出乎意料的、具有统计学意义的相关性。这种现象似乎值得在未来的研究中进一步探讨，因为它表明存在另一个相对快速可衡量的变量，可能反映了成年人学业成绩的其他预测因素，例如他们表现出的尽责程度、集中注意力完成分配的、相对短暂的一次性任务的能力以及对完成任务的态度。斯特鲁普测试尽管最初不是为此目的而设计，但它可以用作一种简单的工具，通过测试者的颜色识别错误数量来提供有关这些变量的信息。这些信息可以随后为教育工作者提供信息，以便在学生缺乏这些能力的情况下，在课程中开展促进尽责和集中注意力的活动。
