If lifting weights to build muscle can improve performance for weightlifters, can increased stamina in learning lead to smarter students?
A new study from the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business finds that when elementary school children extend their ability to focus on either academic or non-academic tasks in the classroom, they boost their mental muscle, and this new level of enhanced stamina can lead to improved test scores and better performance in unrelated subjects such as English and math.
Heather Schofield, assistant professor at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management, and her co-authors explored the concept of "cognitive endurance," which they define as the ability to sustain performance in cognitive tasks over time. This ability is central to performance in a wide range of activities, making it an important component of human "capital" - the collective skills, knowledge, experience and abilities of individuals contributing to economic growth.
The paper, "Cognitive Endurance as Human Capital," published Feb. 8 in the Quarterly Journal of Economics. Co-authors are Christina Brown, assistant professor at the University of Chicago; Supreet Kaur, associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley; and Geeta Kingdon, professor at University College London Institute of Education.
The researchers conducted a field experiment with more than 1,600 students ages 9 to 11 across 66 schools in Pakistan, in which students were assigned to practice basic math problems or engage with "attention-heavy" games. Both assignments were done on tablets and had an aspect of dynamic difficulty whereby they designed tasks so that would feel cognitively effortful rather than attention-grabbing, such as video games. The research team defines cognitive endurance as the ability to sustain performance on a cognitively difficult task over time, which explains why they targeted specific tasks to practice this skill.
The study showed that the researchers approach significantly improved cognitive endurance relative to a control group that had a traditional study hall period, with students showing 22% less decline in performance over time on tasks such as listening and puzzle-solving. These activities also improved school performance across a wide range of subjects, including ones completely unrelated to the training provided like Hindi and English.
"Our study suggests that educational practices, such as asking students to engage in sustained effortful practice rather than passive activities, impact not only the skills learned but also the way in which your brain functions," Schofield said. "This finding is important because these shifts in cognition impact not only that particular task, but all tasks that the students engage in, generating broad benefits."
The findings suggest many potential ways higher cognitive endurance could raise school grades. For example, it may improve one's ability to be attentive in class, listen to and retain material from a lecture, maintain focus while reading a textbook, think through a challenging concept at the end of a long class or get questions right at the end of an exam.
The study also assessed the impact of an additional year of schooling and showed that an extra year enhances cognitive endurance, but only in higher-quality schools. They suggest that educational disparities such as noisy and disrupted classrooms may further disadvantage poor children by limiting the development of cognitive endurance.
The research highlights the potential for cognitive endurance to be improved through practice, offering a new perspective on how education can build general human capital. By demonstrating that cognitive endurance can be developed through sustained learning activities, the study provides insights into how educational practices can be designed to enhance this capacity. This has significant implications for reducing socioeconomic performance gaps, as improving cognitive endurance could help disadvantaged groups perform better academically.
"Our study contributes to the body of work on cognitive fatigue and human capital by providing evidence that cognitive endurance is not fixed and can be improved through practice," Schofield said. "It underscores the importance of cognitive endurance as a component of human capital and suggests that educational practices should focus on enhancing this capacity to reduce performance gaps between different socioeconomic groups."
Sarah Magnus-Sharpe is director of public relations and communications at the SC Johnson College of Business.
