Effect of Academic Self-efficacy and Cognitive Exhaustion on Solving Cognitive Problems

An experiment was conducted to determine the effect of Academic self-efficacy and cognitive exhaustion on cognitive problem solving. The sampling population was the first grade high school students at the city of Sarayan. They were 120 students whom were chosen amongst 450 students answered to the questionnaire of Academic self-efficacy. The scores of the student were one standard deviation less than the average. They were randomly divided into eight groups: experiment and control group, each including 15 students. The experiment consisted of two phases: In the first phase, students were exposed to cognitive problems: experimental group with unsolvable problems and control group with solvable problems. Then all students were exposed to cognitive problems to compare groups. Data were analyzed by two way analyses of variance. Results indicated that academic self-efficacy and cognitive exhaustion have significant effect on solving cognitive problems of students, While gender of students dose not have significant effect on solving cognitive problems. Findings also revealed that there is no significant interaction effect of academic self-efficacy and gender, interaction effect of cognitive exhaustion and gender, interaction effect of academic self-efficacy and cognitive exhaustion and interaction effect of academic self-efficacy, cognitive exhaustion and gender on problem solving performance of students. Therefore in order to findings of the present research, for study of student's performance in problem solving situation, it looks necessary to concentrate on the role of Academic self-efficacy and cognitive exhaustion variables.