Since childhood, we have been told that our result completely depends on how we prepare for the exam, our performance is solely driven by our preparation. However, a study by the University of South Australia and Deakin University has added a new perspective to it. The study has claimed that the exam hall might affect our performance in the examination.

The researchers have linked the poor result of students to the heigh ceiling of the exam hall. They have claimed that the height of the ceiling in the exam hall affects the performance of candidates.

The researchers analyzed the results of 15,400 undergraduate students from different campuses of Australian universities between 2011-19 and compared the results based on the height of the ceiling in the exam hall. They found a pattern suggesting that students who took exams in halls with higher ceilings got lesser marks.

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Factors Affecting Performance

The study was led by Isabella Bower, who clarified that there are other factors affecting the performance, like the number of students in the room, the temperature and air quality fluctuation that affects us mentally and physically impacting our overall performance.

She also carried out virtual reality tests measuring the brain activity of the students as per the types of rooms they were in. She attached electrodes to the scalp of the student and analyzed how the brain responded in different sizes of rooms.

Bower also took a check for changing heart rate and breathing patterns while changing the rooms. She along with her team noticed that in a larger room, the brain started acting in the way it does when concentrating on a difficult task.

"The key point is that large rooms with high ceilings seem to disadvantage students and we need to understand what brain mechanisms are at play, and whether this affects all students to the same degree," she stated.

"Based on these results we were curious to apply our lab findings to a real-world dataset and see if being in a large space like a gymnasium while having to concentrate on an important task would result in a poorer performance," she added.

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