The survey of fluctuations of attention on circadian and weekly rhythms among high school students

Introduction: Human cognitive activities are affected by the time of doing homework, biologic rhythms and interaction among them.  Method: this research accomplished to specify the fluctuation patterns of daily and weekly cycles of the students attention. The research method was correlation. The statistical population of this study were 45 female students in 11th grade from a high school in humanities branch from khodabandeh city in 2017- 2018 academic year, that have been selected through randomized cluster sampling method at two works in a rotational shiftwork at two times on mornings (8, 9/30, and 11 a. m) and afternoons( 13, 14/30 and 16/15 p. m). Horn and Ostberg questionnaire was used for evaluation of the chronotype of students and for the attention assessment the parallel forms of the d2 test administered. The mixed analysis of variance was used to analyze data. Results: there was a significant difference between efficiency of students' attention at different times of day and also difference in efficiency of students' attention in the morning, midday and evening chronotypes. Efficiency of students' attention was different in chronotypes at different hours of the day. Conclusions: regarding the differences of efficiency of students' attention in circadian and weekly rhythms and also individual differences, it is necessary to consider them in teaching and learning process in educational environments.