The Effectiveness of Psychosocial Program on Speed and Accuracy of Information Processing in Students with Sluggish Cognitive Tempo (SCT)

Sluggish cognitive tempo (SCT) includes a series of symptoms used to describe a special type of attention- concentration disorder and slow information processing. Present study was done to investigate the effectiveness of psychosocial program on the speed and accuracy of information processing in children with SCT.

This study was a quasi-experimental research with pretest-posttest control group design. The study population included all the 9 to 12-year old students with symptoms of SCT who were studying at the public schools of Tehran in the academic year 2016-2017. A sample of 60 students with SCT was selected by convenience sampling and then randomly assigned to either the experimental or control group. Slugging Cognitive Tempo Scale (Boronz, 2019) was used to identify these students and the d2 Test of Attention (Brickenkamp, 1981) was used to assess the speed and accuracy of information processing. The experimental group received eight 60-min sessions of psychosocial program, while the control group underwent no intervention. Data were analyzed by MANCOVA.       

Findings showed that there was a significant difference in the mean score of the experimental and control group in terms of speed and accuracy of information processing (F=32.4, P<0.001) and scores of the experimental group increased compared to the control group in the post-test stage.

Based on the results of this study, it can be concluded that the psychosocial program can increase the speed and accuracy of information processing and thus it can significantly reduce the behavioral and academic problems of children with SCT.