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JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH

Figure 3: Time consumption by items

Figure 4: Proportion of student performance categories by task
type

Now let us examine the students who achieved higher scores as
compared to the whole of the group, i.e. whose abstract and
inductive reasoning is more developed. There are 27 students of
this type. The points (filled columns) and time usage (empty
columns) of these students are presented in Figure 5, by time
consumption, in an increasing order, from left to right. In the
cases of the first six students it is clearly visible that they
achieved higher scores even with relatively low time
consumption. These students gained 16-20 points in a time less
than 16 minutes (superficial but quick-witted). The next category
is again made by six students, they achieved similar results in
less than 21 minutes (considered and clever). The rest of the
students used almost all of the time available (24-25 minutes)
and reached good results (slow and clever).

Figure 5: Scores of 27 students achieved in the test and the time
consumed

Remark: Time is indicated on the left hand vertical axis and the
scores on the right one.

To demonstrate success, we introduced the concept of specific
performance. In the inductive test, we can understand specific
performance as the time necessary to achieve a unit of score,
which was defined as the ratio of consumed time and achieved
points by tasks: timex/scorex where timex indicates the time
spent on solving task x (6 items) by seconds, while scorex
represents the score reached during this time. We put the
students reaching the highest scores in this dimension, as well.
We considered 300 sec/point as high specific performance,
which means that the student achieved a high number of points
using little time. The value between 300 sec/point and 450
sec/point was assessed as specific performance of medium level,

and the values above were considered low specific performance,
i.e. a high amount of time was used to reach one unit of points.

Figure 6: Specific performance of the 27 students

Remarks: Time is indicated on the left hand vertical axis and
scores on the right one.

It can be clearly seen in Figure 6 that in almost each cases
(except for H60, H174, H178 and H176) it was the last task
demanding diagrammatic reasoning that reduced specific
performances.

We ranked the students according to the total number of points
gained in the five types of tasks (Figure 7). It can be clearly seen
that in most cases, the students used the whole of the time frame
available, however, each category includes one or two students
who achieved results similar to those of the others by using little
time. For example, in the group of 16 points, student H11 and
H87, H98 in the group of 17 points and students H194 and H84
in the group of 20 points.

We can state that using the whole of the time available does not
necessarily bring about a high score, however, it can be seen that
almost each of the students having gained more than 20 points
utilized the 25 minutes left for them for the test.

Figure 8: Time consumption and final score of the best 27
students, divided in two clusters

We also examined the results of the 27 students performing well
in the test by cluster analysis (Figure 8). The first group
indicated with triangles includes the sober ones utilizing the
whole time frame, while the second group involves the impatient
and superficial ones seeking quickness. We analysed the clusters
according to the cluster centroids (Table 2). The averages were
examined by variance analysis. No significant differences were
found in terms of the achieved scores, however, there were
significant differences between the certain cluster centroids in

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Task 1

Task 2

Task 3

Task 4

Task 5

Weak performance

Medium performance

Good performance

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

900

1000

1100

1200

1300

1400

1500

H194

H98

H11

H87

H84H148

H12

H60

H65

H56

H61H150

H37H178H114H158H122H129

H27H113H175H162

H16

H174

H176

Students

Time 1

Time 2

Time 3

Time 4

Time 5

Task 1

Task 2

Task 3

Task 4

Task 5

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

1400

H11

H87

H148

H56

H150H178H122H113H174

H98

H12

H65

H37

H162H114

H176

H60

H129H194

H84

H27

H175

H61

H158

H16