Effectiveness of cognitive rehabilitation on internet addiction, cognitive inhibition, and emotional control of internet-addicted adolescents

Adolescence is the period of a lifetime when many physical and mental changes happen and thus make adolescents vulnerable to mental issues that must be well-recognized and figure out proper solutions to solve the problems and improve their ability to cope with difficult situations.

This study aimed to examine the effectiveness of cognitive rehabilitation on internet addiction, cognitive inhibition, and emotional control of internet-addicted adolescents.

This is a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest study with a control group. The research population was adolescents from two schools in Yazd. We chose 30 of them with the availability sampling method for the sample group. after that, we randomly put them into experimental and control groups. Before any intervention pretest was taken from them. Then the experimental group received cognitive rehabilitation intervention in 8 sessions. At the end of the interventions, a post-test was taken from both experimental and control groups. To evaluate internet addiction Kimberly young's internet addiction scale was used. To evaluate cognitive inhibition Boshra scale was used. William's emotional control scale was used to evaluate emotional control.

Data were analyzed with analysis of covariance which indicated the effectiveness of the cognitive rehabilitation approach to reduce internet addiction, and improve cognitive inhibition and emotional control levels (p<0.05).

cognitive rehabilitation approach is effective to reduce internet addiction in adolescents, and improve their cognitive skills and inhibitory system. Also, this approach could be effective to enhance emotional control for them.