The Executive Function Of College Students With Childhood Psychological Maltreatment

Purpose: Psychological abuse in childhood may impact the mental development ofindividual. But we pay less attention on the study on the injury of individual executivefunction. In this dissertation we focus on the study of the features of executive functionabout the Psychological abuse in childhood. Method:(1) cluster sampling was appliedon327college students from Harbin Normal University in this study. The ChildrenPsychological Maltreatment Scale was tested in this survey.(2)Then according to thestandard of Child Psychological Abuse Scale,20students who experiencedpsychological abuse and21students of control group were selected to take part in allexperiments.(3) The experiment1: signal-disturbing task, designed2(groups)×2(facialtypes) mixed task. The aim was to find out the feature on restraint of college studentswith Psychological abuse in childhood.(4) Experiment2: N-back task.2(groups)×3(control-based) was used to analyze the feature on memorial updating ability of collegestudents in their children period (the reaction time was the dependent variable).(5)Experiment3was task-shifting. The purpose was to illustrated the characters offlexibility on operate function of college students who were abused psychologicallyduring their children period. Results:(1) In experiment1, the data of dependentvariable (reaction time) was analyzed with Repeated Measurement ANOVA and theresults showed that the main effects in groups (F=7.325, P=0.010) were confirmed. Themain effects on task (F=16.289, P=0.000) were significant, and the interaction betweentypes and groups were significant, the standard deviation of reaction time was analyzedwith Repeated Measurement ANOVA and the results showed that the main effects ingroups (p=6.741, F=0.013) were found. The main effects in tasks (p=9.062, F=0.005)were significant, but the interactional function between tasks and groups (F=0.257,P=0.615) were not found.(2) In experiment2, according to the result on ANOVA ofmixed designation, the main effect in groups (F=9.177, P=0.005) were found. The maineffects of tasks (F=0.028, P=0.868) and the interaction between task types and groups（F=3.426, P=0.073）were not significant.(3)Experiment3: According to the result ofRepeated Measurement ANOVA, the effect of groups (F=5.574, P=0.024), tasks (F=4.161, P=0.049) and the interaction of task types and groups (F=4.137, P=0.050)were all significant. Conclusion: The experience of psychological abuse in childhoodwould cause injuries in various forms, including controlling ability, the updating abilityof the working memory and the ability of task-shifting. In general, subjects whoexperienced psychological abuse showed no difference with their counterparts in thesimple cognitive tasks. However, comparing with the control group, while the difficultyof task increased, in terms of reaction time, the difference between subjects andcontrolled group can be observed. More attention must be paid on the individuals whosuffered from the psychological abuse. The self-confidence of individuals should beenhanced by special ways.