nicipality of the student’s home address.8 In our analyses, we use the average night temperature as reference category, which is found to be the bin 5-10 degrees Celsius in Table 5.2. We further control for the maximum temperature bin at the day of the test. Figure 5.3 shows that the temperature in the night before the test affects the students’ performance on the reading and math test. For reading, the figure illustrates that especially nights with a temperature above 15 degrees Celsius have a negative effect on the students’ performance, compared to nights with a temperature between 5 and 10 degrees Celsius. For math, we see that temperatures higher than 10 degrees Celsius during the night negatively impact the students’ performance on the day of the test. Effects of warm nights are not significantly different for reading and math. While this is informative, it does not rule out that different mechanisms may be responsible for both domains, since reading comprehension and math depend on distinct cognitive processes. Reading comprehension requires students to attain information from a text, knowledge recalling, and connect this information with the student’s own knowledge. Presumably, heat reduces the student’s ability to focus on the text and maintain information in working memory. This can make it harder to understand and integrate new information, follow arguments, and draw conclusions from the text. Math performance consists of complex problem-solving tasks, and so presumably requires a higher cognitive load. It follows that besides reduced concentration of the students, it might also be challenging to keep track of 8We presume that students are at home during the night. For this home address, we consider the municipality in which the student is administered in the Municipal Personal Records Database (GBA). 129
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