Many educators ask their students to conduct research using online information sources. Such sources vary in trustworthiness and quality and despite conventional wisdom, students are not naturally adept at vetting these sources. Empirical research has shown that successful online learning often requires effortful activities such as self-regulation and epistemic cognition. Frequent exertion of such effort may explain why people report feeling exhausted by the conflicting information sources they encounter online. Such feelings of exhaustion may be akin to ego-depletion, where frequent or excessive acts of self-control make subsequent acts of self-control more difficult to enact. Recent criticisms of the ego-depletion paradigm warrant empirical research with different tasks, such as learning online, but such work is scarce, with a lack of research utilizing both process (i.e., what people do) and product (i.e., what people have learned) measures. Therefore, in this study, we randomly assigned 53 college students to either an ego-depletion or control condition and then asked them to use a computer to learn about a complex topic: single-payer health care models. Despite a rigorous ego-depletion treatment, we found no detectable group differences in terms of either process or product data. Our findings contribute to the ongoing controversy about the replicability of ego-depletion effects, as well as whether and how they affect learning.

许多教育工作者要求他们的学生使用在线信息资源进行研究。这些来源的可信度和质量各不相同，尽管有传统智慧，但学生并不天生擅长审查这些来源。实证研究表明，成功的在线学习往往需要努力的活动，如自我调节和认知认知。频繁地进行这种努力可以解释为什么人们报告说他们在网上遇到的相互矛盾的信息来源感到筋疲力尽。这种精疲力竭的感觉可能类似于自我耗竭，其中频繁或过度的自我控制行为使随后的自我控制行为更难以实施。最近对自我耗竭范式的批评需要针对不同任务的实证研究，例如在线学习，但此类工作很少，缺乏利用过程（即人们做什么）和产品（即人们学到了什么）衡量的研究。因此，在本研究中，我们将 53 名大学生随机分配到自我耗竭或控制状态，然后让他们使用计算机学习一个复杂的主题：单一支付者医疗保健模式。尽管进行了严格的自我消耗处理，但我们发现在过程或产品数据方面没有可检测的组差异。我们的研究结果引发了关于自我耗竭效应的可复制性以及它们是否以及如何影响学习的持续争议。我们将 53 名大学生随机分配到自我耗竭或控制状态，然后让他们使用计算机来了解一个复杂的主题：单一支付者医疗保健模式。尽管进行了严格的自我消耗处理，但我们发现在过程或产品数据方面没有可检测的组差异。我们的研究结果引发了关于自我耗竭效应的可复制性以及它们是否以及如何影响学习的持续争议。我们将 53 名大学生随机分配到自我耗竭或控制状态，然后让他们使用计算机来了解一个复杂的主题：单一支付者医疗保健模式。尽管进行了严格的自我消耗处理，但我们发现在过程或产品数据方面没有可检测的组差异。我们的研究结果引发了关于自我耗竭效应的可复制性以及它们是否以及如何影响学习的持续争议。