关键词: 工作记忆刷新功能, 网络游戏成瘾, 奖励动机, 惩罚动机, 大学生

Abstract: Previous studies have found that individuals with Internet gaming disorder (IGD) have relatively low cognitive functioning and commonly suffers from poor academic performance. As a key aspect of executive functioning, working memory plays an important role in the academic growth of college students, not only as a foundation for cognitive development, learning, and education, but also as a prerequisite for everyday use to cope with the complex cognitive challenges of life. Several studies have shown that the risk of IGD has a negative effect on working memory updating, and this negative effect is likely to be the antecedent of the poor academic performance of high-risk IGD college students. Accordingly, based on the motivation-cognition theory, this study aims to explore the influences of IGD risk on college students’ working memory updating, and the effects and differences of reward and punishment motivation induced by manipulating monetary rewards and monetary losses on the working memory updating of high-risk and low-risk IGD college students. The study recruited participants by posting posters and screened a total of 42 high-risk IGD college students and 45 low-risk IGD college students through the Internet (Gaming) Addiction Test. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to complete three reward N-back tasks with different memory loads to examine whether there were differences in working memory updating between high-risk and low-risk IGD college students under with or without reward motivation. In Experiment 2, the corresponding punishment N-back task was selected to examine whether there were differences in working memory updating between high-risk and low-risk IGD college students under with or without punishment motivation in three different memory loads. The results of Experiment 1 found that in the rewarded version of the working memory updating task, high-risk IGD college students had weaker processing than low-risk IGD college students, i.e., longer reaction time and lower accuracy. Under the reward motivation, high-risk and low-risk IGD college students’ reaction time increased, accuracy improved, and the degree of processing was enhanced, and there was no significant difference in the role of reward motivation in facilitating response time and accuracy in the working memory updating task between high-risk and low-risk IGD college students. The results of Experiment 2 found that in the punishment version of the working memory updating task, high-risk IGD college students had similarly weaker processing than low-risk IGD college students. Under the punishment motivation, the accuracy of high-risk and low-risk IGD college students increased, and punishment motivation contributed less facilitating effect to the working memory updating accuracy of high-risk IGD college students than low-risk IGD college students. After conducting a cross-experimental analysis, it was found that the working memory updating accuracy of reward motivation was significantly higher than that of punishment motivation in high-risk IGD students, and there was no significant difference in the working memory updating accuracy of reward and punishment motivation in low-risk IGD students. In conclusion, the study showed that the working memory updating speed and accuracy of high-risk IGD college students are significantly slower and lower than those of non-IGD college students. Rewarding motivation was able to improve working memory updating performance in both high-risk and low-risk IGD college students by both increasing accuracy and slowing down speed, while punishing motivation only improved accuracy and had a weaker facilitating effect on accuracy for high-risk IGD college students than for low-risk IGD college students. Overall, the promotion effect of reward motivation on the accuracy of working memory updating in high-risk IGD students is greater than that of punishment motivation, while the promotion effect of reward and punishment motivation on the accuracy of working memory updating in low-risk IGD college students shows the same utility value. This implies that high-risk IGD college students have a certain degree of impairment in their working memory updating, and they are less sensitive to punishment in cognitive tasks. That reveal the mechanism of high-risk IGD on working memory updating, provide new perspectives to explain why high-risk IGD college students have poor academic performance, and also provide referable suggestions to improve the problem of poor academic performance of high-risk IGD college students.

Key words: working memory updating, Internet gaming disorder, reward motivation, punishment motivation, college students