The Relationship Between Executive Function And Self-regulation, Procrastination In College Students

Procrastination is that somebody delays doing the task which he must do consciously.Procrastination is so common in college students that it has already attracted theattention of the school and the community, etc. Procrastination can not only hinderedindividual·s academic and career development, but also affects their mental health. It isextremely urgent to explore the reason why college students procrastinate.Tworesearch methods are used in this study, they are questionnaire method and experimentmethod. First, we selected645university students randomly to answer thequestionnaires for the sake of the relationship between college students·procrastinationand self-regulation. Second, in order to explore the relationship between collegestudents· procrastination and their executive function, we recruited73participants tocomplete a questionnaire survey and an experiment. Third, we have explored therelationship among the college students· procrastination, self-regulation and executivefunction. The results of the study are as follows:First, the phenomenon of arousal procrastination and avoidant procrastination inthe daily lives of college students is not very serious. In the two types ofprocrastination behaviors, the college students· arousal procrastination is more seriousthan avoidant procrastination. Boys have more procrastination than girls do no matterin arousal procrastination or avoidant procrastination. There is significant difference onspecialty in two types of procrastination: the engineering students have more arousalprocrastination than science students and medical students do, the liberal arts studentshave more arousal procrastination than science students too; The engineering studentshave more avoidant procrastination than the other three majors.Second, the self-regulation ability of college students is relatively well. In the fivedimensions of self-regulation, the self-response is the best, the goal setting andself-monitoring in the next place. Girls· scores are higher than boys·in five dimensionsof self-regulation. There are significant differences in self-regulation among differentprofessions. Medical students behave better than the others professions in setting goals,planning, implementation plans, and self-monitoring etc. Engineering students behave worse in self-regulation compared with other professions.Third, there are significantly negative correlation between the two types ofprocrastination and five dimensions of self-regulation and the coefficient of associationof avoidant procrastination and five dimensions of self-regulation is higher than that ofthe arousal procrastination and five dimensions of self-regulation. The correlationcoefficient between planning、 implementation plan with two types of procrastinationis higher than the other dimensions of self-regulation. Self-regulation can predict thetwo types of procrastination significantly, it is a better predictor of the avoidantprocrastination than the arousal procrastination, and implementation plan can bestpredict the two types of procrastination than the other dimensions of self-regulation.Fourth, the three sub-functions of executive function are significantly associatedwith two types of procrastination, the correlation coefficient between avoidantprocrastination and the sub-function of executive functions is higher than that betweenthe arousal procrastination and the sub-function of executive functions. Executivefunction can predict the procrastination significantly, and that the cognitive switchingfunction is the best predictor of the three sub-functions in the second is the inhibitionfunction, and then is the memory updating function. There are significant differencesof procrastinators of different degree in the executive function, the seriousprocrastinators do worse than the slight procrastinators in executive function: there aresignificant differences between the serious and slight avoidant procrastinators in all thethree sub-functions, but only in the inhibition function，there are significant differencesbetween the serious and slight arousal procrastinators.Fifth, self-regulation as a partial mediator of the roles of the inhibition functionaffects the procrastination of college students; the mediating effect takes1/4of thetotal effect. Undergraduates· inhibition function can directly affect their procrastination,it can also affect their procrastination by self-regulation indirectly, but the direct effectis greater.