فصلنامه روانشناسی شناختی

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of mindfulness and the attention bias program on attention, inhibition and emotional regulation among children with generalised anxiety disorder. This was a quasi-experimental study with a pretest-posttest design. The population of this study consisted of 30 children with generalised anxiety disorder referred to psychiatric clinics in Tehran's 20th district selected by the available sampling method and randomly divided into experimental and control groups. The experimental group underwent an integrated program of attention correction and mindfulness for 8 sessions and the control group did not receive any intervention. In addition, parents of all participants completed the brief executive functions test at pre-test and post-test. Data were statistically analysed at two levels of descriptive (mean and standard deviation) and inferential (multivariate analysis of covariance). The results of this study showed that the program of correcting attention bias and mindfulness had an effect on the amount of attention, inhibition and emotion control among children with generalised anxiety disorder (p < 0.001). According to the findings of this study, it could be concluded that the combination of the treatment of attention bias and mindfulness improves executive functions in children with generalized anxiety and can be used in clinical interventions.

The importance of understanding the pathology, nature, and treatment of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) has always been emphasised throughout school. Children with ASD have difficulties in verbal and non-verbal social communication, which limit their ability regarding effective social communication and academic achievement. The purpose of this research was to compare learning strategies and executive functions among successful and non-successful autistic students in terms of academic achievement. For this purpose, 15 successful students with ASD and 15 non-successful students with ASD were recruited via the purposeful sampling method. The Autism-Spectrum Quotient Test, the executive functions and learning strategies questionnaires were used. Data was analysed with an independent t-test. Results showed that, successful students with ASD had a significant difference with the second group in all variables of learning strategies in addition to inhibition, emotional management, planning, organizing and attention shifting. It can be concluded that students with ASD who are successful in education use more learning strategies and have better executive functions compared with autistic students who are not successful in education.