Browsing by Projects - Researcher "Dr. CHAN Chi Keung, Alex"

Executive functioning (EF) refers to a broad set of cognitive processes that enable individuals to regulate and organise their thoughts or actions to meet adaptive goals (Diamond & Lee, 2011). EF skills grow rapidly in the preschool years and play a vital role in early childhood neurocognitive development and early school success (Masten et al.; 2012; Zelazo, Carlson, & Kesek, 2008). Previous studies conducted in Western societies have found a socioeconomic disparity in children’s EF performance (Fitzpatrick et al., 2014; Rochette & Bernier, 2014). Recently, the preliminary results of our previous FDS-funded research project showed a socioeconomic disparity in two core EF skills - working memory, cognitive flexibility, and overall EF among young Chinese children in Hong Kong (Chan et. al., 2016). To reduce this socioeconomic gap in EF development, this proposed research aims to develop a parent-based EF-focused intervention to build supportive parenting that enhances the EF skills of young Chinese children from low-income families in Hong Kong as well as to investigate the effectiveness and the fidelity of implementation of this parent-based EF-focused intervention.

Although a few school-based EF-focused curricula have been shown to improve the EF skills of low-income and disadvantaged children in Western countries, it may not be feasible for local kindergartens serving economically disadvantaged children to embed these schoolwide EF-focused interventions into their existing curricula. Also, these school-based interventions may not be culturally tailored to the psychoeducational needs of children from low-income families in Hong Kong. Another concern is that the effect of these school-based interventions may not have lasting impact without positive influences from the home environment to reinforce the EF skills. Recent research has shown that supportive parenting is positively associated with children’s EF development at home (Blair & Raver, 2012; Herbers et al., 2014; Lengua et al., 2013). However, Chinese parents from low-income families have lower scores on supportive parenting practices (Chan et al., 2016). Thus, it is important to develop an intensive and tailored parent-based EF-focused intervention programme to educate and to empower Chinese parents from low-income families in applying supportive parenting practices at their home-setting that can enhance the EF development of their young children.

There will be two key components of this parent-focused intervention: 1) four 2-hour weekly parent educational sessions about children’s EF development and supportive parenting practices along with the teaching of tangible EF-specific daily activities for parents to practice at home and 2) three 20-minute monthly individual parent review sessions to discuss their daily EF-boosting practice, to address their concerns, and to further build their efficacy and competence in supportive parenting. The proposed study will have four phases: The first phase (12 months) will focus on designing and developing a parent-based EF-focused intervention for parents and young children from low-income families. In the second phase (8 months), a small-scale pilot randomised wait-list control study to try out the procedures and materials of implementing this intervention will be conducted. For this pilot study, 40 Chinese parents and their children aged 4 to 6 years from two local kindergartens will be recruited. In the third phase (12 months), about 128 mother-child dyads will be recruited from eight local kindergartens and randomly assigned to either the experimental group or the wait-list control group. Self-report measure and two 15-minute observation of child-play interaction will be used to evaluate supporting parenting practice. In addition, a battery of EF measures administered to children will be collected at the beginning, the 4th month, and the 8th month for both groups. Semi-structured interviews with parents and child will also be conducted after the 4-month intervention to understand their feedback to the programme. The final phase (4 months) will focus on investigating the effectiveness and fidelity of this newly developed parent-based EF-focused intervention using both quantitative and qualitative data analyses.

The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between executive function (EF) skills and early school success for young children from low-income families in Hong Kong. Specifically, this study focuses on examining the effects of socioeconomic disparity on EF development and early school success for economically disadvantaged children in Hong Kong. This study adopts a longitudinal design across the second (K2) and third years (K3) of kindergartens. This study attempts to address three key research questions:

1. Do young children from low-income families show lower levels of EF and slower growth in EF relative to their middle-class peers in Hong Kong?
2. Does better growth in EF predict early school success for young children from low-income families in Hong Kong?
3. Do maternal and paternal parenting styles relate to positive EF development and early school success for economically disadvantaged children? The findings of this study will have theoretical, practical, and policy implications concerning the importance of EF development for the early school adaptive performance and success of economically disadvantaged children.

The aim of this proposed longitudinal study is to investigate the relations of six constituent components (self-kindness, common humanity, mindfulness, self-judgment, isolation, and overidentification) of self-compassion (SC) with academic stress across primary, secondary, and university students in Hong Kong. Self-compassion is defined as a tendency to treat oneself with kindness and compassion when one encounters suffering, inadequacy, or failure (Neff, 2003). Pervious study by Neff et al. (2005) found that SC was negatively associated with performance goals and showed a significant mediation effect with lesser fear of failure and higher perceived competence. Recent studies showed that SC reduced academic stress of medical students (Kemper et al., 2019), lowered the risk of depression among South Korean university students even feeling of academic burnout (Lee & Lee, 2020), partially mediated the negative effect of perfectionism on test-related hope for Hong Kong primary students (Fong and Cai, 2019). Nevertheless, these studies used global SC scores that cannot unpack the differential mechanisms of the six SC components on academic stress of students. Studies with Chinese community (Chen et al., 2011; Finlay-Jones et al., 2018) and student samples (Law & Chan, 2019; Sun et al., 2016) consistently indicated that six-factor model (six SC components) fits better with practical and cultural implications. Furthermore, the role of the self-judgment (self-criticism) component is still unclear for Chinese/East Asians with the possible explanations of dialectical self-beliefs and the presence of constructive self-criticism as self-enhancement (Boyraz et al. 2021). In fact, a local study conducted by Sun et al. (2016) found that self-kindness and common humanity benefited female adolescents’ psychological well-being whereas mindfulness and self-judgment was advantageous to male adolescents’ psychological well-being. Law and Chan (2019) only found that isolation and overidentification (but not self-judgment) significantly mediated and intensified the negative effect of performance goals on academic stress among Chinese university students. However, these studies were limited with their cross-sectional and single-group research design. As academic stress is one of the key factors that strongly associated with the deteriorating well-being of Hong Kong students at various developmental stages, policymakers have raised the concern for the mental health issues amongst students (Food & Health Bureau, 2018). The proposed study, to our knowledge, is a pioneering study to adopt a prospective longitudinal mixed-cohort design to 1) examine the dynamic relations of the six SC components with academic stress over an academic year, 2) investigate the mechanisms of how the levels and changes of the six SC components mediate the relationship between performance-goal orientation and academic stress, and 3) explore the mediating roles of the six SC components on the relationship between performance-goal orientation and academic stress across Chinese primary, secondary, and university students from a developmental perspective. Using stratified random sampling at the school/institutional level, the proposed study is planned to recruit 300 primary students (4th graders) from three schools, 300 secondary students (10th graders) from three schools, and 300 undergraduate students (sophomores/Year 2 students) across three local universities for this longitudinal survey study. Longitudinal data analyses will be used to 1) discern whether the three positive and the three negative SC components serve as protective or risk indicators for academic stress, 2) provide a deeper understanding on the mediating role of each of the six SC components in buffering or intensifying academic stress over time, and 3) provide important baseline information for developing developmentally-appropriate and culturally-sensitive SC-based intervention to alleviate academic stress of Chinese students in Hong Kong. The findings of this study will have theoretical, methodological, practical, cultural and policy implications and impacts by understanding the mechanism of the six SC components for reducing academic stress and supporting well-being of Chinese students in Hong Kong.

Although numerous studies have shown that positive psychology (PP) interventions can improve physical, emotional, social and psychological well-being, very little is known about the neural mechanisms of human flourishing. Positive neuroscience is an emerging field of research that focuses on valued cognitive and affective qualities in the brain functioning that support human development and flourishing (Seligman, 2009). Whereas considerable neuroscience research has focused on disease, dysfunction, and psychological problems, positive neuroscience uses neuroscientific tools to investigate positive psychological concepts, providing a new perspective on and more in-depth insights into the ways the brain enables human flourishing. Furthermore, more and more practitioners are incorporating concepts of positive psychology into their existing practice in various disciplines (e.g. education, mental health, social work etc.). Therefore, it is important to build knowledge of positive neuroscience to promote brain-based best practice from an interdisciplinary perspective to support human flourishing across different developmental stages. The proposed IIDS project will comprise some research-led educational seminars and short courses developed to facilitate dialogue between scientists and practitioners (overseas and local) in various disciplines, and thereby to gain a better understanding of the mechanisms and applications of positive neuroscience. The five proposed seminars will be thoughtfully designed and partly based on Professor Martin Seligman’s model of flourishing (PERMA) and the recent trend of positive neuroscience. The five topics of the seminars will be: 1) Positive Neuroscience: Exploring the Neuroscience of Well-Being, 2) Mindful Mind: Towards a Cognitive Neuroscience of Mindfulness, 3) Connecting Neuroscience with the Meaning of Life, 4) A Cognitive Neuroscience Perspective on Prosocial Behaviour, and 5) Nurturing a Creative Mind through the Neuroscience of Creativity. Two 3-day short courses will also be offered to build the participants knowledge of and competence in the use of principles and concepts of positive neuroscience to plan evidence-based practice and interventions in their own disciplines to improve the well-being of their clients. The first short course will be titled as “Brain Plasticity and Positive Human Development” and will address the following topics: brain plasticity; theory of change, early neurocognitive interventions, behavioural development, competence, and resilience. The second short course will be titled as “Applying Positive Neuroscience in Designing Evidence-based Mental Health Practice” and will address the following topics: neural bases of strength-based interventions, compassion-based interventions, brain-based addiction treatment and prevention, positive neuroscience and geriatric palliative care, and healthy ageing. To promote interdisciplinary learning, speakers will be from the fields of cognitive neuropsychology, social neuropsychology, clinical psychology, developmental psychology, educational psychology, psychiatry, and social work will be invited to contribute to the seminars and short courses. Together, the seminars and short courses that make up this proposed IIDS project will not only help local scholars, researchers, students, and practitioners in various disciplines to gain more knowledge and a better understanding of positive neuroscience, they will also build their competence in teaching, studying and applying positive neuroscience in their own disciplines. Although the field of positive neuroscience is still nascent, interdisciplinary insights will be gained from the in-depth and ongoing intellectual exchanges promoted by this project between scientists and practitioners in and beyond the proposed seminars and short courses, helping them to develop high quality scientific research and ultimately to integrate this research with evidence-based practice.