Grace: Today, we will present to you our science fair topic; "Can Positive Reinforcement Prior to Tests Enhance Performance?"

Josephine: Ever wondered whether positivity could affect test results? Thirty enriched grade 9 math students wrote a math test after receiving either positive or negative comments.

Grace: The data shows that the average of the test results of students who received positive comments was higher than of those who had received negative comments.

Josephine: Our hypothesis for this experiment was, "If negative reinforcement prior to a test may be harmful towards test marks, then perhaps positive praise prior a test may be helpful to achieve excellent marks, because positive reinforcement can be beneficial on academic performance."

Grace: The controlled variable was two grade 8 Nelson Math tests; each with the same math concepts.Meanwhile, The independent variable was the positive or negative encouragement prior to taking the test, and The dependent variable was the results from the grade nines AP Math students marks from each test.

Josephine: What materials did we need in order to successfully conduct this experiment? The materials needed for this experiment were

• Paper
• Pencils
• Calculator
• Desk
• Classroom
• Erasers
• Math Test 1

• Math test #2

Grace: The class was divided into two groups: one group to receive negative encouragement, and the other to receive positive encouragement. The negative test subjects were brought out of the classroom to receive negative comments while the positive test subjects were in the classroom receiving positive encouragement.

Josephine: For the positive test subjects,

1. In the classroom, the students received positive comments/encouragement.
2. The test was handed out to the students who received positive encouragement.
3. With a calculator, a pencil and eraser, the positively encouraged students completed the questions.
4. Upon completing the questions, the students handed in the test.
5. The test was marked and results were recorded.

Grace: For the negative test subjects,

1. The students were brought out of the classroom
2. Outside of the classroom, students were given negative comments by one of the scientists conducting the experiment.
3. The students returned to the classroom where the test was received.
4. The test subjects wrote the test.
5. Upon completing the questions, the test was handed in.
6. The tests were marked and results were recorded

.

Josephine: *Explain graph 1 & 2*

Grace: *Explain graph 3 & 4*

Grace: Apart of "negatively" encouraging the students included saying things such as "This test is a quite difficult and will not be to your ability level.." (Elaborate more on the negative reinforcements)

Josephine: The positive reinforcements that the students received before the test are: "this test is very easy, don't worry. In fact, this test is based off of grade 8 concepts, so you should do fine on this test.

Josephine: (continued) "Just a reminder that someone out there loves you and that you'll do well on this test. Today will be a good day!"

Grace: In this investigation, it was learned that reinforcement, both positive and negative, did affect a student's test mark. From the data collected, it could be concluded that if a student received positivity prior a test, the test mark was affected beneficially.

The reason why this occurred was because positivity boosted the focus level of the student as well as how well/efficient the student would cope with stress. The reason why a student's test result could be harmed if they received negative comments was because negativity raised stress levels.

Grace: When stress was induced, the effects were tiredness, and a lack of concentration.

Grace: The effects of stress, which was derived from feeling negative and receiving negative reinforcements contributed to performing poorly on a test.

Josephine: These conclusions are supported in the averages of both tests. The average for the test subjects receiving positive reinforcement prior to the test was 90 %, whereas the average for the test subjects who received negative reinforcement prior to the test was 72%.

Grace: These averages proved that the negative reinforcement had 

Grace: caused the test subjects to perform worse. Meanwhile, positive reinforcement had caused students to perform better during the math test provided. Therefore reinforcement, both positive and negative, could influence a student’s academic performance on a test.

Josephine: To improve this experiment in the future, what could have been done was instead of selecting the pre-AP math class, two academic math classes could have been selected (one class receiving positive reinforcement and the other receiving negative reinforcement). The reason for this was so that in total, more test subjects could have been used to

Josephine: provide more accurate data.

Grace: In total, only 30 test subjects were used from the academic level chosen, Advanced Placement. However, when the group of Advanced Placement grade 9 math students were chosen, the amount of test subjects were limited to only 30 people.

Josephine: In the future, what could have been done was choosing a group that was the same academic level with a larger amount of students so that more data could be acquired to provide more accurate results.

Grace:We chose this topic as our science fair because one of the most studied phenomena in psychology is the correlation between positivity and intelligence. It has been proved that being happy can lead to being more intelligent, so we decided to base our experiment off of this belief.

Josephine: After using positive and negative reinforcement on grade 9 enriched math students prior the given math test, it was concluded that the hypothesis was correct. Collected data had displayed that the students  had tended to perform better when positive reinforcement was used prior a test