Cognitive Control and Judicial Bias of Adolescents with and without Internet Addiction: A Comparative Study

Abstract

Cognitive control is the intrapersonal conflicts between logic and lust, cognition and incentive, planning and internal action, which results in the dominance of the first part of each pair over the second part. A cognitive bias refers to a type of cognitive vulnerability in information processing. Today, the Internet has tied with human life, but addiction to the internet has adverse effects on people especially adolescents who have no skill in cognitive control. This study aimed to determine the difference between cognitive control and judicial bias in two groups of adolescents with and without internet addiction. The population consisted of male and female second-grade high school students in district 2 of Tehran in 2020-2021. The sample size was 16000 students. 18 schools were selected using the random clustering sampling method. The research tools were the Young internet addiction test (1999), Grasmic et al (1993) self-control scale, and Foa et al (1996) negative social probability scale. The data were analyzed by SPSS 26 using multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and the Mann-Whitney U test. Results showed that the total mean score of cognitive control in the groups of adolescents with internet addiction was lower than adolescents without internet addiction. The comparison of subscales indicated that, except for the subscale of Preferences for physical activities, there were significant differences in the subscales of impulsiveness, convenience, risk-taking, self-centeredness, and expressing anger (P≤0.01). The mean scores of these variables were higher in the group of adolescents with internet addiction. Regarding the variable of judicial bias, the Mann-Whitney U test showed that the mean scores of the adolescents with internet addiction were higher than those of the adolescents without internet addiction, and the addicted adolescents showed more judicial biases (P≤0.01). The results revealed the requirement to perform strategies to prevent and cope with internet addiction.