I read a lot of press releases before reading the actual study. When I read this study, I thought it is probably a candidate for the igNobelprizes, but as with many of those studies, let’s see if there’s more in it than meets the eye (and do read on because there will be an unexpected twist in this post with a crucial update!).

Ok, let’s check this new study from the University of South Australia and Deakin University, which claims to have revealed “a link between rooms with high ceilings and poorer examination results”.

The first reaction, still based on the press release: Aha, a link, so this means correlation?

What did they do to examine this? (quotes still taken from the press release, not yet from the actual study)

Dr Bower and her team analysed data from 15,400 undergraduate students between 2011-2019 across three campuses at an Australian university, comparing students’ exam results with ceiling heights of the room in which they sat the examination.

Still a correlational study.

After considering individual student differences and their prior performance in coursework, they found that students had lower scores than expected when sitting exams in rooms with an elevated ceiling.

The researchers factored in the students’ age, sex, time of year when sitting the examination, and whether they had prior exam experience in the courses investigated.

Still a correlation, but corrected for some elements.

Dr Bower says it is difficult to identify whether this is due to the scale of the room itself, or factors such as student density or poor insulation, which in turn lead to fluctuating temperatures and air quality — all factors that can affect the brain and body.

A hypothesis, but still a correlation.

“These spaces are often designed for purposes other than examinations, such as gymnasiums, exhibitions, events and performances,” Dr Bower says.

“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.”

Still a hypothesis, but wait, maybe there is more?

The results support experiments that Dr Bower has done using virtual reality (VR), measuring brain activity of participants exposed to different rooms, while controlling for other factors such as temperature, lighting and noise.

Using a technique called electroencephalography (EEG), where electrodes are attached to the scalp to measure brain cell communication, her team altered room sizes, while recording the brain’s response. They also measured heart rate, breathing and perspiration, revealing if someone could unconsciously detect a change to the environment.

In these VR experiments, they found that simply sitting in a bigger room resulted in brain activity associated with concentrating on a difficult task. This led them to question if task performance in large spaces is reduced.

“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,” Dr Bower says.

Although it is in another study, it is becoming more than a correlation. The combination of both studies could make it interesting.

However, the press release still does not answer an important question before we start considering policy. A question for which we need to finally turn to the actual study: How big is this adverse effect?

By the way, I always read the actual study before posting it on this blog, but you might wonder why I haven’t mentioned it yet.

Well, when I wanted to read the actual research, I was surprised to find that the study had been temporarily removed!

The publisher regrets that this article has been temporarily removed. A replacement will appear as soon as possible in which the reason for the removal of the article will be specified, or the article will be reinstated.

I don’t know why the study has been removed. The press release is still making the rounds, so it’s worth checking at a later date. Until then, don’t start rebuilding your auditoria just yet!

*update* Now I know why the study was removed!

After the study was published, a query from a reader of the journal article led the authors to review their calculations.

The authors discovered some honest errors in their work, leading them to conclude that the relationship between ceiling heights and exam score was “more nuanced” than presented in the paper.

The revised research manuscript was reviewed by the same anonymous peer-reviewers who looked at the original research. One reviewer did not feel comfortable assessing the statistical corrections, one advised against publishing the corrected manuscript, and a third recommended revisions.

On this basis, the Journal of Environmental Psychology rejected the amended version. The journal’s response can be found here.

The authors, lead by Isabella Bower, apologise for the error, and are working to resubmit their updated research to another journal.