نشریه روانشناسی شناختی
سال نهم شماره 3 (پیاپی 29، پاییز 1400)

People with borderline personality disorder experience problems in a variety of cognitive areas, including information processing, decision making, planning, memory, and problem solving. The aim of the study was to modeling the intermediate role of metacognitive awareness on the relationship between overgeneral autobiographical memory and problem solving. The research was fundamental and in terms of implementation method was correlational. The statistical population included all individuals with borderline personality disorder who referred to psychological and psychiatric clinics in Kurdistan province in 1397-98. 300 patients with diagnosis of borderline personality disorder based on clinical interview and willing to participate in the study were selected. They answered the Autobiographical memory test, metacognition awareness questionnaire and social problem solving inventory. Data were analyzed using Amos software. Findings showed that overgeneral autobiographical memory has a direct effect on problem solving skills and metacognitive awareness with coefficients of 0.17 and 0.20, respectively. Also, the direct effect of metacognitive awareness on problem solving was 0.35. Overgeneral Autobiographical memory predicted 4% of the variance of metacognitive awareness, and Overgeneral autobiographical memory with metacognitive awareness predicted 17% of problem-solving changes. On the other hand, the indirect effect of Overgeneral autobiographical memory on problem-solving skills was 0.07, which shows that the indirect effect of Overgeneral autobiographical memory on problem-solving skills is significant. Therefore, it can be concluded that metacognitive awareness acts as a mediator as an observer, which increases the scores of problem-solving skills.

Executive dysfunction is a hallmark of traumatic brain injury (TBI) and is associated with significant complications. Deficiency in problem-solving, emotion regulation, and attention is one of the most common phenomena after brain injury. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of short-term intervention of dual executive function on problem-solving, emotion regulation, and selective attention in patients with traumatic brain injury. This quasi-experimental design used pre-test and post-test with a control group. Twenty subjects with brain injury were selected with the Purposive sampling method. They were randomly entered into two experimental and control groups (10 in the experimental group and 10 in the control group). After performing the pre-test, the experimental group received the short-term intervention and double executive function in 8 sessions of 90 minutes, while the control group did not receive any intervention. The assessment was performed in two stages of pre-test-post-test using a set of software tests of the Tower of London, Stroop and John and Gross (2003) Emotion Regulation Questionnaire. Analysis of covariance was used to analyze the data. The results showed a significant difference in the mean scores between the experimental group and the control group in all variables after the test. Therefore, it can be concluded that short-term intervention of dual executive function has a significant effect on improving attention, emotion regulation, and problem-solving in people with traumatic brain injury.

Recent neuroimaging studies have shown that main symptoms of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) such as deficits in social communication, speech and repetitive behaviors are associated with abnormalities in neural connectivity. The abnormalities in neural connectivity have been studied by several methods. Among these methods, electroencephalography is an efficient and a non-invasive tool that records brain electrical activity and helps us to gain information about brain neural connectivity and cognitive characters. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to analyze electroencephalogram resting state data to compare brain connectivity (coherence) patterns between children with ASD and typically developing children. The method of this study was descriptive-analytical. The population of the study consisted of all children with ASD (aged 6-13) referred to psychologists in Mehraz Andisheh Clinic in Shiraz. Fifteen children with ASD (boys = 11 and girls = 4) were selected via purposeful sampling method. Moreover, a group of fifteen typically developing children who were matched based on chronological age and gender were recruited. Quantitative Electroencephalography data analyses showed a significant difference between the two groups and indicating hyper connectivity in most frequency bands among children with ASD. Therefore, quantitative electroencephalography patterns of children with ASD indicated an increase in the levels of coherence in delta (p < .05) and theta (p < .05) powers in the prefrontal region, theta (p < .05) and alpha (p < .05) waves in the central region, in theta (p < .001), alpha (p < .001) and beta (p < .001) waves in the occipital region, in addition to delta (p < .001), theta (p < .001) and alpha (p < .001) waves in the temporal region. The findings demonstrated abnormalities in brain connectivity (coherence) patterns of children with ASD which is supported by cortical connectivity theory. Consequently, these findings (hyper connectivity patterns) can be considered as a useful marker to better diagnose ASD. Moreover, changing these patterns may have a positive impact on the treatment of individuals with ASD.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of training metacognitive beliefs and state on working memory of elementary school students. This study was a quasi-experimental study with a pre-test, post-test, follow-up and a control group design. The population consisted of elementary school students in Birjand. Forty-six students in the sixth grade were recruited via convenience sampling method. The participants were allocated to the experimental group (n = 23) and the control group (n = 23). The metacognitive training package was used to teach metacognitive beliefs and state. Moreover, the computer image recognition test (N-Back) was used to evaluate working memory. Data were analyzed using Mann Whitney U, Friedman and Wilcoxon tests. The findings indicated a significant difference between the experimental group and the control group. Furthermore, the experimental group showed higher levels of mean in working memory scores compared to the control group. The results of the follow-up test suggested the lasting effect of the training. According to the results of the present study, it can be concluded that training metacognitive beliefs and state might enhances students’ working memory.

Anxiety is a natural reaction of humans to stress that occurs in the face of various factors. Anxiety is considered as a mental illness if it is excessive and uncontrollable in the form of fear and anxiety. Today, clinicians use certain criteria to diagnose anxiety disorders. This analytical-observational study was aimed at automatically classifying the two levels of anxious and normal by analyzing electroencephalogram signals. In this paper, the DASPS database was used, which contains a 14-channel electroencephalogram of 23 people (13 females and 10 males, mean age 30 years) during anxiety. Anxiety was presented in the form of flooding as actual exposure to the feared stimulus. Based on the results of the Self-Assessment Manikin, data were divided into two groups: (1) normal and low anxiety and (2) moderate and high anxiety. Approximate entropy, fractal dimension, and Lyapunov exponents were extracted from all channels as nonlinear properties. Maximum relevance and minimum redundancy were used to select the best feature to apply to the multilayer perceptron network. To evaluate the performance of the algorithm, different network structures were examined in terms of the number of features and neurons as well as different feature dimensions. Maximum accuracy, precision, f1-score, and sensitivity in 20 repetitions in all cases is equal to 100, and with an increasing number of neurons, the average accuracy increases. The best results were obtained for 5 features and 15 neurons, where the mean accuracy, precision, f1-score, and sensitivity for it were 80%, 92.75%, 84.15%, and 80.58%, respectively. The results of this paper indicated the capability of the proposed algorithm to distinguish anxious people from normal ones.

Due to the importance of rehabilitation among children with special learning disabilities, the aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of brain Gym on suppression of theta/alpha ratio and working memory of students aged 8 to 12 years with dyslexia or dysgraphia. This research was a quasi-experimental study with a pre-test and post-test design with a control group. The population of this study included all girls and boys with reading or writing disorders referring to special centers for learning disabilities in Kermanshah. The convenience sampling methods were used. For this purpose, according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 20 students aged 8 to 12 years were selected and randomly allocated into two groups of 10 people. The experimental group were received brain Gym intervention for 20 sessions of 20 minutes over 10 weeks. In order to record the brain waves of the participants, a dual-channel neurofeedback device was used. Moreover, the Wechsler memory software was used to measure their active memory. To analyze the data, univariate one-way covariance analysis and multivariate one-way covariance analysis were used using SPSS software version 26. The results showed that the ratio of theta waves to alpha in the experimental group was significantly reduced and active memory span in the experimental group was significantly increased compared to the control group (P < .05). The findings of this study indicated that brain exercise can significantly suppress the ratio of theta waves to alpha and also improve working memory among children with special learning disabilities. The findings confirm the neurological evidence for the positive effect of the brain Gym intervention on the modulation of brain waves and working memory in children with dyslexia or dysgraphia.