This Önding has implications for educational policy. In deciding whether learners should be selfguided
or instructor-guided in making time allocation decisions, it is important to Örst explore the
general properties of the uptake functions that govern the relationship between time investments
and attained competence. For complex tasks which are likely to have slow but accelerating rates
of uptake at low levels of investment, self-guided learning may result in allocation levels that are
suboptimally low. As most parents are intuitively aware, children often give up on tasks that are