Intra-individual Response Time Variation, Family Environment Quality And Academic Performance In Primary School Children

The level and improvement of Children's academic achievement have been a focus of development psychology.Both cognitive ability and external environment have importance influence on academic performance.Intraindividual Reaction Time Variability(IIV)is a behavioral indicator of central nervous system function.As an information source for understanding differences in individual cognitive performance,it provides important information about cognitive function,especially executive brain function or cognitive control.Previous studies have found that IIV could predict children's academic readiness,reading,and math performance from the cross-sectional perspective.However,some studies have found a bidirectional predictive relationship between children's cognitive function and academic performance.Cognitive function guarantees the smooth development of learning activities,and learning activities also provide background and resources for exercising children's cognitive function.Therefore,there may be an interaction between IIV and academic performance,which requires further research from longitudinal perspective.In addition,as the micro-system that has the most direct impact on children,the family plays an important role in children's academic development.Most researches explored the influence of family factors and cognitive ability factors on children's academic performance from mediation models rather than moderation model.Therefore,in order to better understand the predictive relationship between IIV and academic performance,due to the limitation of cross-sectional studies,.this study relied on longitudinal data,and combined questionnaire and behavioral experiment task to explore the relationship between IIV in cognitive task and children's academic performance,and further investigated the moderating effect of family environment quality.Totally 234 primary school-age students in Xi'an were recruited.Family adaptabilty and cohesion scale,the Flanker task,and final Chinese and math scores were followed for three years,with a one-year interval between each test.The major findings of this study were as follows:(1)IIV decreased significantly with the growth of grades,which indicated that the cognitive function reflected by IIV increased among primary school children.There was a significant gender difference in IIV,the IIV of boys was significantly higher than that of girls.This showed that the cognitive function of girls reflected by IIV was better than that of boys.(2)There were significant negative simultaneity correlations between IIV and Chinese and math scores,and there was also a significant negative chronological correlation between IIV and Chinese scores.This showed that the higher the IIV,the worse the academic performance.(3)During the three years,IIV could significantly negatively predict Chinese scores.In turn,Chinese scores at gradel could significantly predicted IIV at grade2.It indicated that among the lower grades of primary school children,the cognitive function reflected by IIV dominated the development of academic performance.Although the early academic performance had a certain predictive effect on IIV,with the development of children's cognitive function,the impact of learning activities on cognitive function reduced.(4)Family environmental quality played a moderating role in the longitudinal relationship between IIV and Chinese and math scores.It appeared that children in the lower family environment quality conditions,the higher the IIV,the worse the academic performance,but such association was not significant in the higher family environment quality conditions.The conclusion of this study was that among the lower grades of primary school children,the cognitive function reflected by IIV increased with the growth of grades,and girls had better cognitive function than boys.There was an interaction between IIV and academic performance,and the interaction was dynamic to a certain degree.The quality of the family environment also regulated the impact of IIV on academic performance.