Neural Changes Following Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Procrastination

Assessment of procrastination level. The Polish version of PPS consists of 12 items that evaluate procrastination conceptualized as a dysfunctional delay (e.g. "I am continually saying I'll do it tomorrow"; "I delay making decisions until it's too late"). Participants respond on a 5-point scale (1 = "very seldom or not true of me"; 2 = "seldom true of me"; 3 = "sometimes true of me"; 4 = "often true of me"; 5 = "very often true of true of me")

Assessment of academic procrastination level. The Polish version of API consists of 19 items that evaluate the tendency of students to procrastinate in their academic tasks (e.g. "If I had an important project to do, I'd get started on it as quickly as possible", "Getting down to work often takes me a long time."). Participants respond on a 5-point scale (1 = "false"; 2 = "mostly false"; 3 = " sometimes false/sometimes true"; 4 = "mostly true"; 5 = "true").

Assessment of depressive symptoms. The Polish version of PHQ-9 consists of 9 items that evaluate the occurrence of depressive symptoms in the last 2 weeks (e.g. "Little interest or enjoyment of your activities"). Participants respond on a 4-point Likert scale (0 = "not at all"; 1 = "on a few days"; 2 = "on more than half of the days"; 3 = "nearly every day").

Assessment of anxiety symptoms. The Polish version of GAD-7 consists of 7 items that evaluate the occurrence of anxiety and excessive worry symptoms in the last 2 weeks (e.g. "Feeling afraid as if something awful might happen"). Participants respond on a 4-point Likert scale (0 = "not at all"; 1 = "on a few days"; 2 = "on more than half of the days"; 3 = "nearly every day").

Before and after therapy they will be asked to assess the percentage of the project that has been completed. The higher the difference between the two assessments the better the outcome.

Participants from Warsaw, prior to and after the interventions will undergo fMRI measurements, consisting of resting state and two cognitive tasks. In the first task participants will read sentences representing three conditions: sentences related to academic duties, sentences presenting negative events or situations, and sentences presenting neutral events or situations. The second task will be a monetary go/no-go task in two conditions: neutral condition, where participants will get some amount of money for each task block, regardless of their performance, and punishment condition, where participants will be given some amount of money prior to each task block, and will lose a fraction of the money each time when they respond to NoGo signal, or when they don't respond to Go signal or respond to it too slow.

Participants from Poznań before and after the interventions will undergo electroencephalography (EEG) measurements, during two emo-cognitive tasks. In the first task, participants will passively view single words related to three conditions: academic procrastination, negative emotions, neutral words. The second task will be a classic go/no-go task. In the posttest, there will be an additional negative norm-referenced feedback condition, where participants will be informed that their current performance in the go/no-go task is lower than a certain percentage of people who were tested. The EEG examination will utilize the Event-Related Potential (ERP) technique to measure the brain's electrical activity in response to specific events (stimuli and responses). This study will particularly focus on attentional processing and monitoring components, such as the P300, and Error Related Negativity (ERN) and Error Positivity (Pe).