فهرست مطالب غلامرضا شیخی

Test anxiety is an important educational problem that affects students's mental health, efficiency, talent development, personality formation, and social identity. For students to achieve academic success, the search for effective methods to reduce test anxiety is vital. One of the coping strategies for test anxiety is mindfulness–based cognitive therapy, which is to pay attention to the present without judgment to calm the mind and body in stressful situations. Also, using methods based on working memory training is one of the new methods to reduce the symptoms of test anxiety, including attention and concentration. No research in Iran has so far compared the effectiveness of the two mentioned methods. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate and compare the effectiveness of mindfulness–based cognitive therapy and working memory improvement on reducing test anxiety in high school male students in recognizing the best way to reduce test anxiety.

This research was quasi–experimental with a pretest–posttest design with a control group. The study populations comprised all first–grade high school students in Tehran in 2017–2018. The inclusion criteria comprised having test anxiety, an IQ greater than 90, using the Raven IQ test to control the non–interference of IQ in the research, and completing the consent form. Atotal of 45 students were selected for three groups of working memory improvement, mindfulness–based cognitive therapy, and control group (each group for 15 persons). Each experimental group received 8 one–hour sessions of interventions. The research tool was Test Anxiety Scale (Sarason, 1980), in which all students were assessed before and after interventions. To describe the data, we used descriptive statistics indicators (mean and standard deviation) and to analyze the data, univariate covariance analysis and Bonferroni post hoc test in SPSS 24 at a significance level of 0.05.

Findings showed that both interventions (mindfulness–based cognitive therapy and working memory improvement) had significant effects on reducing test anxiety (p<0.001). The effect size was equal to 0.74, which shows that group membership explained 74% of the changes in test anxiety. However, the size effect of mindfulness–based cognitive therapy was higher than working memory improvement (p<0.001).

According to the research findings, two methods of mindfulness–based cognitive therapy and working memory improvement significantly reduce students' test anxiety. However, comparing the methods, the effectiveness of mindfulness–based cognitive therapy is greater.

 The main area of development that underlies most behaviors from childhood onward, throughout the lifespan, is executive function. Working memory, mental set-shifting, and response inhibition are examples of core executive functions. Working memory is considered a core cognitive system that supports complex cognitive processes. Rehabilitation interventions may contribute to improving working memory capacity. Previous research revealed that mindfulness intervention effectively improved attention, working memory, cognitive flexibility, and other executive functions by paying attention to the present time without judgments. In addition, N-back instruction for training working memory was approved as an effective way to promote working memory capacity; it was initially designed for rehabilitation purposes. Mindfulness practices and N-back training are applicable for clinical and non-clinical populations. The present research addressed working memory capacity because it may strongly predict various higher-order cognitive capabilities, including language comprehension, reasoning, and even general intelligence. N-back intervention allocates perceptual or cognitive resources to essential matters and prevents unessential issues. Furthermore, in concentrating on targets in the external world, there is a top-down attentional mechanism in working memory for tasks requiring multiple internal memory representations access and manipulation. Thus, the present study aimed to compare the effects of working memory training by mindfulness-based cognitive therapy and N-back intervention.

 This quasi-experimental research a with a pretest-posttest-follow-up and a control group design. The statistical population included all high school students in Tehran City, Iran (N=45) divided into three groups: N-back intervention, mindfulness intervention, and controls. Two experimental groups received 8 sessions of interventions. To collect the necessary data, the Tehran-Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale was used before and after interventions to test the sustainability of effectiveness. Also, Univariate Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was conducted to test the hypothesis. Bonferroni test evaluated and compared two interventions (p<0.05). SPSS was used for data analysis.

 The current study findings revealed that both interventions provided significant effects on working memory capacity (p<0.001); however, the Bonferroni test data suggested that the size effect of N-back was higher than that of the mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (p<0.001).

 According to the present research findings, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy and N-back intervention can improve students' working memory function and capacity.

This research was carried out to study the association between personality traits and work-family conflict among teachers. Methods The method of this research was a correlation study. Participants were 100 teachers that answered to NEO & family-work conflict questioners. For analysis the data were stem from the research applied statistical methods, included; mean, standard deviation, T-Test, correlation and multi variable regression. Results The results indicated that there was negative and significant relationship between personality traits (included; extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness) with family-work conflict. Furthermore, the results of T test did not showed significant difference in personality traits and family-work conflict in males and females teacher. The regression results indicated that two dimensions of traits, neuroticism and agreeableness could explanation %76 of family-work variation. Also, neuroticism dimension could explanation %48 of family work variation. Moreover, the other two dimensions of trait involving; neuroticism and openness could explain %92 of family-work variation. Conclusions the results suggested that family-work conflict characteristics had association with personality traits. In addition, the results showed that there was not significant relationship between personality traits and family-work conflicts in males and females teachers.