| Procrastination is defined as ‘putting off an intended course of action voluntarily despite expecting to be worse off for the delay’.As a stable personality trait,such disposition has ubiquitously caused troubles across life domains,including work efficacy,academic performance,mental health and so on.Hence,it is attached much significance to exploring the causes resulting in procrastination,which facilitates the intervention of procrastination in the future.Importantly,the researchers hold that procrastination occurs when individuals suffering from anxiety prioritize the need to emotion regulation over pursing the long-term goals.Consistently,the meta-analysis have revealed the positive association between trait anxiety(an anxiety-prone personality)and procrastination.However,less known is about the neurocognition accounting for how trait anxiety affects procrastination.The looming vulnerability model of anxiety holds that anxiety is derived from negative episodic prospection towards the uncertain events,and senses of its rapid progression.Also,the temporal decision model of procrastination proposes that to procrastinate or not hinges on the competition between engagement utility and outcome utility,the process of which relies on the faculty of episodic prospection.Hence,episodic prospection could play a role in the effect of trait anxiety on procrastination.A preliminary study shows that the direction of episodic prospection(engagement,outcome)predicts the inter-difference in task procrastination.To date,however,no study has ever incorporated the valence of episodic prospection(positive,negative)to investigate its impact on procrastination.Collectively,current study is designed to address these issues: 1)study 1 performed the voxel-based morphology(VBM)method to reveal the neural substrates accounting for how trait anxiety impacted procrastination;2)study 2 investigated whether episodicprospection could moderate the relation between trait anxiety and willingness of engaging tasks.To explore the neural basis responsible for how trait anxiety affected procrastination,the two independent samples(sample 1: 168 participants;sample 2: 91participants)were recruited in study 1 to acquire the reliable results.All participants were required to complete the scales,including Trait sub-scale of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory,Beck Depression Inventory,and The General Procrastination Scale.Firstly,the correlation analysis was performed between trait anxiety and procrastination(sample 1).Afterwards,the whole-brain analyses were conducted to explore the neural basis underlying trait anxiety and procrastination respectively using VBM method(sample 1).Lastly,the mediation analysis was conducted to explore whether gray matter volumes(GMV)in the overlapping region could mediate the relation between trait anxiety and procrastination(sample 2).The results found that: 1)trait anxiety showed positive correlation with procrastination(sample 1);2)trait anxiety was positively correlated with GMV in right hippocampus,while negatively correlated with that in right orbital frontal cortex(OFC)and right precuneus;procrastination was positively associated with GMV in right hippocampus,while negatively associated with that in right precuneus and left superior temporal gyrus(STG);right hippocampus was the shared neuroanatomical structure between trait anxiety and procrastination(sample 1);3)the GMV in right hippocampus could mediate the relation between trait anxiety and procrastination(sample 2).Taken together,the results in study 1 suggested that the correlation between trait anxiety and procrastination behaviorally could be attributed to the common neural basis in hippocampus,a region supporting episodic prospection.To further the cognitive basis responsible for the effects of trait anxiety on procrastination,study 2 recruited 85 subjects adopting the free construction of episodic prospection paradigm.All participants were required to construct freely about the procrastination events and write them down,which were coded by two independent raters to acquire the characteristics of episodic prospection.Afterwards,the participants were supposed to rate the engagement willingness in 24 hours of each events they chose,which was defined as the index of engagement willingness.Meanwhile,all of them were asked to finish the scales,including Trait sub-scale of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory,the general procrastination scale,Beck Depression Inventory,and Episodic Future Thinking Scale.Hence,the results found that: 1)trait anxiety was negatively correlated with engagement willingness,and positively correlated with procrastination;2)compared to those with low trait anxiety,those with high trait anxiety showed lower engagement willingness;3)episodic prospection towards the negative engagement utility could moderate the relation between trait anxiety and engagement willingness.Specifically,trait anxiety could not significantly predict procrastination in the condition of the more episodic prospection towards negative engagement utility,while could in the condition of the less episodic prospection towards negative engagement utility.Collectively,the findings suggested that the episodic prospection towards negative engagement utility could be the cognitive basis responsible for how trait anxiety impacted procrastination.To sum up,present study found: 1)the shared neural substrates in right hippocampus,a region in episodic prospection,could mediate the effect of trait anxiety on procrastination;2)episodic prospection towards negative engagement utility could moderate the relation between trait anxiety and procrastination.Firstly,the results showed that abnormalities of GMV in hippocampus mediated the relation between trait anxiety and procrastination.The result suggested that the structural changes in hippocampus might give rise to negative episodic prospection,which was likely to be the neural basis underlying the effect of trait anxiety on procrastination.Secondly,episodic prospection towards negative engagement utility moderated the relation between trait anxiety and procrastination.The results suggested that less projection towards negative engagement utility could deliver less task aversiveness,further buffering against the relation between trait anxiety and maladaptive behaviors,namely procrastination.Overall,current study yielded insights into the cognitive and neural basis underlying how trait anxiety impacted procrastination,and provided the intervention measures from the perspective of episodic prospection. |
PDF Full Text Request