ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Cognitive Science
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1527933
Effects of Group Cognitive Behavior Therapy on Cognitive Flexibility in College Students with High Obsessivecompulsive Symptoms
Provisionally accepted
- Anhui Medical University, Hefei, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Objective: To explore the effect of group cognitive behavior therapy on cognitive flexibility in college students with high obsessive-compulsive symptoms. Methods: Fifty-eight college students were randomly divided into an experimental group and control group (29 in each group). The experimental group was treated with group cognitive behavior therapy (twice a week for four weeks) whereas the control group was untreated. Before and after the intervention, the two groups of students were tested with the obsessive-compulsive scale OCI-R, cognitive flexibility scale CFI, acceptance and action questionnaire AAQ-II, and the cognitive fusion questionnaire CFQ to evaluate the effect after the intervention. Results: In the total score of obsessive-compulsive scale, the interaction between measurement time and groups was significant (F(1,56)=17.563，p<0.001). The post-test score of the experimental group was significantly lower than that of the pre-test score, and there was no significant difference in the control group before and after the intervention. In the total score of the cognitive flexibility scale, the interaction between measurement time and groups was significant (F(1,56)=6.616, p<0.05). The post-test score of the experimental group was significantly higher than the pre-test score, and there was no significant difference in the control group before and after the intervention. In the second edition of the action questionnaire and the cognitive fusion questionnaire, the interaction between measurement time and groups was significant(F(1,56)=18.887，p <0.001. The post-test score of the experimental group was significantly lower than that of the pre-test, and there was no significant difference in the control group before and after the intervention. Conclusion: Taken together, our results show that group cognitive-behavioral therapy significantly improved the cognitive flexibility of college students with high obsessive-compulsive symptoms, resulting in a significant reduction of these symptoms.
Keywords: cognitive behavioral therapy, College students with high obsessive-compulsive symptoms, Cognitive flexibility Conceptualization, Data Curation, Formal Analysis, Investigation,Methodology,Software, Visualization,Writing-Original Draft, Writing-Review & Editing, Author 2: Methodology,Supervision, Author 3: Supervision, Data Curation, Investigation Conceptualization, Funding Acquisition, Resources,Supervision,Validation,Writing-Review & Editing
Received: 14 Nov 2024; Accepted: 10 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Sifan, Lu, Wei and Kongliang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: He Kongliang, Anhui Medical University, Hefei, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.