Adaptation and Investigation of the Validity of Experiencing Short-Term Training of Executive Functions (Step) in the People Suffering from Anxiety Disorder: a Case Study

Anxiety disorder is a serious disorder which damages other psychological, communicative, social and emotional processes of the people too. Through investigating short-term training of executive function (step) in the people with anxiety disorder, Therefore the present study was conducted to adapt and investigate the validity of experiencing short-term training of executive functions (step) in the people suffering from anxiety disorder. Materials & A single-subject with A-B design was used in the present study. Four 19-13 year-old people were selected according to purposive sampling method. The participants of the study responded to the questionnaire of state-trait anxiety, Wisconsin’s executive functions test and emotional regulation questionnaire as the research instruments before administering intervention. After measuring the base line, the intervention of step’s training executive functions (Cantor, et.al., 2014) was administered in 12 sessions with the content of problem-solving, emotion regulation and attending to the cycle of emotion creation and then the posttest was administered. The findings of the present study were analyzed based on visual analysis and the indexes of descriptive statistics. During visual analysis of data graph, training executive functions was effective on four subjects in a way that this treatment was able to lead to the decrease of state-trait anxiety and the improvement of executive functions and emotional regulation of the people with anxiety disorder. The results of the study implied the profitability of training executive functions on the state-trait anxiety, emotional regulation and executive functions of the people with anxiety disorder that according to these findings, this intervention can be employed to decrease state-trait anxiety and improve emotional regulation and executive functions of the people with anxiety disorder.