152. A study on the psychological impact of counselor's ideological and political education on cognitive impairment among college students

Abstract Background In recent years, high academic pressure, information overload, and career competition anxiety have contributed to cognitive impairment among university students, manifested as reduced attention, learning inefficiency, and impaired cognitive flexibility. Studies indicate that about 20% of students experience significant learning difficulties, 30% show decreased emotional regulation, and nearly 35% report persistent inattention and weakened task execution. Without timely support, cognitive deficits and negative emotions may interact and further increase academic and psychological risks. Structured ideological and political education has the potential to strengthen value identification, self-regulation, and planning abilities, and is increasingly emphasized in the integration of mental health and ideological education in universities. Therefore, this study, grounded in the university ideological and political education context, introduces cognitive support training and quantitatively evaluates its effectiveness in reducing cognitive failures, alleviating anxiety, and enhancing self-efficacy, aiming to optimize support strategies for students at risk of cognitive impairment. Methods This study recruited 120 university students (aged 18 ~ 22) with marked learning coping difficulties or executive deficits and randomly assigned them to an intervention group (n = 60) or a control group (n = 60). The intervention group received an 8-week program combining ideological and political education with cognitive support training twice a week, including responsibility-focused case discussions, task execution training, and mindfulness-based feedback. The control group only attended regular ideological and political theory courses. The Cognitive Failures Questionnaire (CFQ) and the Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7-item scale (GAD-7) were used for assessment before intervention (T0) and after intervention (T2). Independent samples t-tests were performed with a significance level of p<.05, and Cohen’s d was calculated to determine effect size. Results The changes in various indicators before and after the intervention in both groups are shown in Table 1. In the intervention group, the CFQ score decreased from 49.6 ± 6.8 at T0 to 38.2 ± 5.7 at T2 (p<.001, d = 1.75), a decrease of approximately 23%, indicating effective relief in attention maintenance, memory processing, and task performance errors. Simultaneously, the GAD-7 score decreased from 11.9 ± 3.2 to 7.0 ± 2.8 (p<.001, d = 1.36), with anxiety symptoms decreasing by approximately 41%, manifested as reduced learning avoidance and increased task engagement. In contrast, the control group showed no statistically significant improvement in either indicator at T2 (both p>.05), maintaining the pre-intervention psychological state level. Discussion Embedding cognitive support training into ideological and political education can effectively enhance college students’ self-awareness, learning efficacy, and cognitive control, particularly in reducing cognitive failures and anxiety. The findings suggest that structured, group-based, and feedback-oriented counselor-led programs can serve as a routine strategy for mitigating cognitive impairment risks in universities. Future work may incorporate digital behavioral feedback, learning tracking, and peer support to enable more personalized and sustainable intervention, thereby improving students’ academic adaptation and psychological resilience.