Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2020-03-27
Abstract： In December 2019, an outbreak of a novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) occurred in Wuhan, Hubei province, China. COVID-19 is characterised by fever and severe acute respiratory symptoms in early stages, which can rapidly progress to acute respiratory distress syndrome that is associated with high mortality. As of 10 February 2020, 37.626 cases have been confirmed and COVID-19 has directly caused 1.016 deaths in China. The wide and rapid spread of COVID-19 has intensely captured public attention, leading to increased mental health stress. Timely mental health care and intervention during the outbreak of COVID-19 is urgently needed not only for confirmed or suspected patients and frontline medical workers, but also for the general public. Previous studies showed that affirmation of personal values can buffer psychological stress responses in various threat situations. The goal of the present study was to investigate whether an intervention involving reflection on personal values was capable of buffering psychological stress responses during the outbreak. We recruited 220 participants who completed a questionnaire on their personal values. Those in the self-affirmation group were asked to choose and write their thoughts and feelings of a personal value that made them feel important to themselves while those in the control condition were asked to do the same for a personal value that they thought was important to others. Both groups completed a Self-rating Anxiety Scale (SAS) and Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) prior to and 7 days after intervention. We used two-way repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) to evaluate the buffer effect of value affirmation on stress responses with time of assessment as a within-subjects factor and intervention group as a between-subjects factor for anxiety and depression. Our results revealed a significant relationship between time and intervention for the reduction of anxiety. Further simple effect analysis demonstrated that the control group showed heightened levels of anxiety 7 days after intervention compared with before, whereas participants who affirmed their values did not show any increase. This effect remained significant after controlling for sex, age, educational level, and annual family income. However, no significant differences were found for depression. The present study demonstrates for the first time that an experimental intervention involving the affirmation of personal values can buffer psychological stress response during the COVID-19 epidemic. Specifically, participants who affirmed their values did not show increased levels of anxiety compared with control participants. Self-affirmation is easy to accomplish since it does not require professional guidance or a distinct environment and occupies little time, it would be a convenient strategy for the public to cope with psychological stress during the outbreak.
Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2020-01-03
Abstract： Reading comprehension is one of the most complex behaviors that we engage in on a regular basis. Decoding and language comprehension are two important components of reading comprehension. While up to now, little research has been devoted to directly explore the effects of phonological memory and central executive function on diverse reading comprehension components (decoding and language comprehension). In addition, the primary school stage is a critical period of development of children's reading ability and cognitive ability. However, few research has focused on the developmental changes in the relationship of phonological memory, central executive function and reading comprehension among children in different grades. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine the contribution of phonological memory and central executive function on decoding and language comprehension of children in different grade levels. Two hundred and fifty-six children completed Chinese Characters Reading, Chinese Word Reading, and Pseudo-Word Reading to investigate decoding ability, as well as a Listening Comprehension Test to exam language comprehension. Additionally, we used Digit Span and Non-word Span to measure children's phonological memory, and GO/NOGO task, Stroop task, Digit updating task and Digit shifting task to investigate children's central executive function. Correlation analysis and structural equation models (SEM) were used to investigate the effects of phonological memory and central executive function on decoding, language comprehension of children in different grades. Results indicated that, the effect of phonological memory and updating on decoding were significant. Also, the effect of updating and shifting on language comprehension were significant. On further analysis, we divided the four grades into two levels based on the reading stage theory, that third grade and fourth grade as one level, fifth grade and sixth grade as another level. In the third grade and fourth grade level, phonological memory and updating accuracy contributed to decoding. Moreover, updating accuracy and shifting cost predicted language comprehension. In the fifth grade and sixth grade level, only the effect of updating on decoding was significant.The results indicated that, the prediction of phonological memory on decoding disappeared as children progress through school. More importantly, we found that updating had a relatively stable contribution to decoding across grade levels. It revealed that different functions of working memory played different roles in reading, which seem that not all cognitive abilities are equally important in the reading process. Furthermore, phonological memory and central executive function produced different predictive effects in decoding and language comprehension as the grades grew. "
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