| Academic procrastination refers to the behavior phenomenon that students voluntarily postpone the start or completion of a predetermined learning task despite knowing that doing so will bring adverse consequences(Goroshit,2018;Steel&Klingsieck,2016).It will not only lead to unsatisfactory academic performance and low academic self-efficacy,but also negative emotional experience,such as anxiety,depression,self-blame,etc.,and even put students in a state of high stress and harm their physical and mental health(Balkis&Duru,2017;Ferrari,Johnson,&Mc Cown,1995;Kim&Seo,2015).However,academic procrastination is very common.More than 75%of college students,69%of middle school students and 39%of primary school students admit that they have academic procrastination.Some of them have long-term obstructive delays,which affect their normal study and life.At present,the research on academic procrastination at home and abroad mainly focuses on college students,and there are few studies on primary and middle school students,especially the lack of research on primary school students.However,the primary school stage is a critical period for the development of individual human behavior habits(especially learning habits).After entering primary school,learning began to become the main activity and task of students.The problem of academic procrastination began to appear and gradually became obvious,and it has became a practical problem that school education and family education must deal with.Because the behavior of academic procrastination at this stage is basically externalized,explicit,unstable,and highly plastic,it is of great scientific value and practical significance to study primary school students'academic procrastination from the perspective of development,explore the formation mechanism of academic procrastination,and further formulate the clinical program of prevention and intervention of academic procrastination.However,the lack of effective assessment tools for primary school students'academic procrastination has hindered and limited the in-depth research in this field,so it is very important and urgent to develop the widely used assessment tools to meet the requirements of psychometrics.Therefore,in this paper,Study 1 aimed to compile a scale of academic procrastination for primary school students with good reliability and validity and conforming to China's national conditions,and further investigated the current situation of academic procrastination of primary school students in grade three to six.The temporal decision model on procrastination believes that the root of procrastination decision-making lies in the trade-off between the task's negative engagement utility(mainly task aversiveness)and the task's positive outcome utility(Zhang&Feng,2020).Combined with the temporal decision model on procrastination,when faced with a specific learning task,the individual will realize the evaluation of the negative engagement utility and the positive outcome utility of the task by anticipating the task's negative engagement and positive outcome,and the competition of the two utilities will determine whether the individual choose to procrastinate or take action.A large number of studies have shown that the formation of procrastination was closely related to the insufficient development of cognitive factors such as self-control,emotional regulation,time management,and self-efficacy,especially the three core cognitive abilities including self-control,time management and emotion regulation,which can simultaneously enter the cognitive component model of primary school students'academic procrastination to jointly affect primary school students'academic procrastination(Wang et al.,2021).However,how do these three core cognitive abilities affect primary school students'academic procrastination?It's not clear.From the perspective of cognitive development,the formation of academic procrastination is affected by cognitive factors at different stages.Insufficient development of core cognitive abilities of individuals in the development process may lead to maladaptation problems such as academic procrastination behavior.And research has found that the core cognitive abilities that lead to academic procrastination in different grades are different(Wang,2021).Then,what is the development mode of the impact of core cognitive ability on academic procrastination of primary school students?It's still unknown.In addition,the assessment of task engagement and task outcome relies on the process of episodic future thinking.However,what role does episodic future thinking play in the effect of core cognitive ability on academic procrastination?It's not clear.Based on this,Study 2 aimed to explore the formation mechanism of primary school students'academic procrastination from the perspective of core cognitive ability development.According to the results of Study 2,episodic future thinking played an important role in the formation of primary school students'academic procrastination,which can regulate the impact of core cognitive abilities on academic procrastination.Then,theoretically,we can improve the behavior of academic procrastination by strengthening the episodic future thinking of the positive outcome of the task and restraining the individual's episodic future thinking of the negative engagement of the task.However,there is little research on the intervention of academic procrastination by episodic future thinking training.Therefore,the purpose of Study 3 was to intervene the academic procrastination behavior of primary school students based on the episodic future thinking training,and further confirm the role of episodic future thinking in the formation of academic procrastination of primary school students from the manipulative level.Based on the above analysis,this thesis started from the temporal decision model on procrastination,and carried out three studies to systematically explore the current situation(Study 1),formation mechanism(Study 2)and intervention(Study 3)of primary school students'academic procrastination.In Study 1,a scale for primary school students'academic procrastination was compiled and the current situation of primary school students'academic procrastination was analyzed,which was specifically divided into two sub-studies.Study 1a(N=4287)compiled a scale for primary school students'academic procrastination through exploratory factor analysis,confirmatory factor analysis,and reliability and validity testing.The scale contained 24 items and consisted of five factors:homework procrastination on school day,homework procrastination on holiday,procrastination in preparing for exams,procrastination in autonomous learning and academic procrastination belief.The internal consistency reliability and split-half reliability of the scale were 0.89 and 0.91,respectively.The results of confirmatory factor analysis showed that the five factor structure model of the scale fitted well(?~2/df=4.47,RMSEA=0.04,CFI=0.95,TLI=0.94).In addition,taking academic performance as the empirical criterion,the correlation between each factor score and the total score of the scale and the academic performance reached a significant level of 0.001.The scale developed in this study has good reliability and validity,which can be used as an effective tool to measure the severity of academic procrastination in Chinese primary school students.Study 1b(N=3658)aimed to examine the current situation of primary school students'academic procrastination.The results show that:(1)Overall,the proportion of primary school students with serious procrastination accounted for about 16%,the proportion of primary school students with general procrastination accounted for about 27%,and the proportion of primary schools with no or less procrastination accounted for about 56%,indicating that academic procrastination was a relatively common phenomenon among primary school students,and some students even had serious academic procrastination.(2)In terms of grade comparison,with the increase of grade,the proportion of primary school students who seriously procrastinate continued to increased,and the proportion of primary school students who generally procrastinated also showed an upward trend,while the proportion of primary school students who did not procrastinate or procrastinated less showed a decline,indicating that with the increase of grade,there were more and more pupils who procrastinated in their studies.(3)The exploratory investigation found that academic procrastination may be related to inadequate self-control,difficulty in emotional regulation and poor time management.Therefore,Study 2 focused on exploring how the development of the three core cognitive abilities of self-control,emotion regulation and time management affected the formation of academic procrastination in primary school students.Study 2 explored the formation mechanism of primary school students'academic procrastination based on the perspective of core cognitive ability development,including two sub-studies.Study 2a(N=3028)investigated the effects of core cognitive abilities(self-control,emotion regulation,time management)on the formation of primary school students'academic procrastination based on the assessment and analysis of task engagement and task outcomes.The results showed that:(1)After controlling grade,gender,and age,self-control(including impulsive system and control system),emotion regulation and time management could enter the model together and optimally predict academic procrastination.Among them,the impulsive system of self-control and emotional regulation difficulties had positive effects on academic procrastination,while the control system of self-control and time management tendency had negative influence on academic procrastination.(2)The model fitting index of the whole grade(third to fifth grade)was good(?~2(9)=102.71,RESEA=0.059,CFI=0.988,TLI=0.963).Except that the negative engagement utility was insignificant in the mediation role between the control system of self-control and academic procrastination,all direct and other indirect pathways of the impact of core cognitive abilities on academic procrastination were significant.Specifically,task negative engagement utility and positive outcome utility mediated the relationship between the impulse system of self-control and academic procrastination,and task positive outcome utility mediated the relationship between the control system of self-control and academic procrastination.Emotion regulation played a moderating role in the relationship between task engagement utility and academic procrastination.Task negative engagement utility and task positive outcome utility mediated the relationship between time management and academic procrastination.(3)There were grade differences in the impact path of primary school students'academic procrastination on core cognitive abilities:the model fitting index of the third grade was good(?~2(9)=7.48,RESEA=0.000,CFI=1.000,TLI=1.005).For the third grade,except for the direct path that core cognitive abilities had on academic procrastination,all indirect paths of core cognitive abilities on academic procrastination were not significant.The model fitting index of the fourth grade was good(?~2(9)=23.53,RESEA=0.049,CFI=0.991,TLI=0.972).For the fourth grade,in addition to the direct path of the effect of core cognitive abilities on academic procrastination,the moderating effect of emotion regulation on the relationship between negative engagement utility and academic procrastination,and the mediating effect of negative engagement utility on the relationship between the impulsive system of self-control and academic procrastination were also significant.The model fitting index of the fifth grade was good(?~2(9)=67.88,RESEA=0.089,CFI=0.974,TLI=0.920).These results indicated that the model of each grade in the third to fifth grade had its own characteristics,which may imply that the dominant core cognitive abilities that affect primary school students'academic procrastination were different in different grades.For the lower grades(grade four),the influence of self-control and emotional regulation on the formation of primary school students'academic procrastination was more dominant.For the upper grades(grade five),the influence of time management on the formation of primary school students'academic procrastination was more dominant.Study 2b(N=721)further explored the moderating role of episodic future thinking in the influence of core cognitive abilities on academic procrastination.The results showed that:(1)The influence of emotion regulation on academic procrastination was moderated by negative engagement imagination.Further simple slope analysis showed that compared with individuals with low negative engagement imagination,for individuals with high negative engagement imagination,difficulty in emotional regulation could lead to more serious academic procrastination behaviors.(2)The impact of the impulsive system of self-control on academic procrastination was moderated by the positive outcome imagination.Further simple slope analysis showed that compared with individuals with high positive outcome imagination,for individuals with low positive outcome imagination,the impulsive system would lead to more serious academic procrastination behaviors.(3)The influence of the control system of self-control on academic procrastination was moderated by the positive outcome imagination.Further simple slope analysis showed that compared with individuals with high positive outcome imagination,for individuals with low positive outcome imagination,poor control system development could lead to more serious academic procrastination behaviors.(4)The influence of time management on academic procrastination was moderated by the positive outcome imagination.Further simple slope analysis showed that compared with individuals with high positive outcome imagination,for individuals with low positive outcome imagination,poor time management could lead to more serious academic procrastination behaviors.These results suggested that thinking more about the“positive outcome”of task completion and less about the“negative engagement”of task completion would help reduce the negative impact of poor core cognitive ability development on primary school students'academic procrastination.Therefore,Study3 focused on episodic future thinking training to carry out intervention research on primary school students'academic procrastination.Study 3 explored the impact of episodic future thinking on academic procrastination,and further investigated the effect of episodic future thinking training on the improvement of primary school students'academic procrastination,including two sub-studies.Study 3a(N=1042)adopted a free construction method to examine the effect of episodic future thinking on academic procrastination.It was found that after controlling for age,gender,grade,and the average number of thoughts,the four dimensions of episodic future thinking(e.g.,positive engagement imagination,negative engagement imagination,positive outcome imagination,and negative outcome imagination)could enter the model together and optimally predict the execution willingness,in which positive engagement imagination and positive outcome imagination had positive influence on execution willingness,and negative engagement imagination and negative outcome imagination had negative influence on execution willingness.These results demonstrated that the students'academic procrastination behavior could be improved by guiding them to imagine more positive outcomes and less negative engagement of the tasks which were easy to procrastinate(such tasks were characterized by both negative engagement and positive outcome).Therefore,Study 3b explored the improvement effect of episodic future thinking training on academic procrastination from the perspective of intervention.A total of 71 students with high academic procrastination in grade 5 and 6 of a primary school in Chongqing were recruited for this study(intervention group:N=35;Control group:N=36).The study adopted an experimental design of pre-test and post-test in intervention group and control group.The intervention group received a 6-day episodic future thinking training course(6 lessons,40 minutes for each lesson),while the control group received normal school activities.In the pre-test and post-test,the participants in the intervention group and control group were simultaneously tested with the episodic future thinking task(two volunteers coded the contents independently to obtain the indicators of episodic future thinking ability,task negative engagement imagination and positive outcome imagination)and the academic procrastination scale,with an interval of 10 days.The results showed that:(1)In terms of episodic future thinking ability,the post-test score of the intervention group on the episodic future thinking ability was significantly higher than the pre-test score,while the control group had no significant difference between the pre-test and post-test,indicating that the training effectively improved the episodic future thinking ability of the intervention group.(2)In terms of negative engagement imagination,the intervention group's score on negative engagement imagination was significantly lower in the post-test than that in the pre-test,while the control group had no significant difference between the pre-test and post-test,indicating that training effectively reduced the negative engagement imagination in the intervention group.In terms of positive outcome imagination,the intervention group had a significantly higher score on the positive outcome imagination in the post-test than that in the pre-test,while the control group had no significant difference between the pre-test and post-test,indicating that the training effectively improved the positive outcome imagination of the intervention group.(3)In terms of academic procrastination,the intervention group's score on academic procrastination was significantly lower in the post-test than that in the pre-test,while the control group had no significant difference between the pre-test and post-test.These results suggested that the episodic future thinking training could improve the episodic future thinking ability and change the bias of imagination,making individuals imagine more positive outcome and less negative engagement of tasks,and effectively reducing the academic procrastination behavior of individuals.In general,it was found that:(1)The academic procrastination scale for primary school students included five dimensions:homework procrastination on school day,homework procrastination on holiday,procrastination in preparing for exams,procrastination in autonomous learning and academic procrastination belief.The scale had good reliability and validity,and could be used as an effective tool to measure the severity of academic procrastination in Chinese primary school students.(2)As the grade increased,more and more primary school students were procrastinating.(3)The three core cognitive abilities of self-control(including impulsive system and control system),emotion regulation and time management could jointly affect the formation of academic procrastination in primary school students.Specially,the impulse system of self-control increased academic procrastination by enhancing task negative engagement utility and reducing positive outcome utility,while the control system of self-control reduced academic procrastination by enhancing positive outcome utility.Emotion regulation played a moderating role in the relationship between task negative engagement utility and academic procrastination.Time management reduced academic procrastination by reducing task negative engagement utility and enhancing positive outcome utility.(4)The dominant core cognitive abilities that affect primary school students'academic procrastination were different in different grades.For the lower grades(grade four),the influence of self-control and emotional regulation on the formation of primary school students'academic procrastination was more dominant.For the upper grades(grade five),the influence of time management on the formation of primary school students'academic procrastination was more dominant.(5)Negative engagement imagination significantly moderated the effect of emotion regulation on academic procrastination,while positive outcome imagination significantly moderated the effect of self-control and time management on academic procrastination.(6)The episodic future thinking training could improve the ability of episodic future thinking,enhance positive outcome imagination,reduce negative engagement imagination,and effectively reduce academic procrastination behavior.On the one hand,this paper systematically examined the core cognitive mechanism of primary school students'academic procrastination from the development perspective,and explored the mechanism mechanism of insufficient development of core cognitive abilities such as self-control,emotional regulation,and time management on primary school students'academic procrastination,as well as the moderating role of episodic future thinking in the relationship between core cognitive ability and primary school students'academic procrastination.Thus,it deepens people's understanding of the formation mechanism of primary school students'academic procrastination and has high scientific value.On the other hand,aiming at the lack of primary school students'academic procrastination measurement tools,this study adopted a standardized questionnaire compilation process to develop the primary school students'academic procrastination scale that fitted the Chinese cultural background.At the same time,this research explored the intervention for primary school students'academic procrastination from the perspective of episodic future thinking training.Therefore,this research also has important practical significance. |
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