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Effects of anxious emotions on the behavioral problems of Chinese children with learning difficulties

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Abstract

Under the one-child policy and with the economic development, there has been an annual rise in both anxious emotions and behavioral problems among students with learning difficulties. In order to evaluate the relationship between anxious emotions and behavioral problems, this study adopted a quantitative approach to randomly select 6000 elementary school students in Jiangsu Province of China, then screened 714 anxious children with learning disabilities. The conclusions of this research were as follows: for children with learning difficulties, their anxious emotions and behavioral problems were above average, notably their social phobia and learning problems; behavioral problems of children with learning difficulties varied due to demographic variables, and there was a significant interaction effect of rearing styles and family atmospheres on children’s behavioral problems; separation anxiety, social phobia, generalized anxiety disorder, family atmosphere (harmony), rearing style (democracy), parental expectation (self-sufficiency) and somatization/panic disorder of children with learning difficulties could predict their behavioral problems. Based on the results, this study proposed a few suggestions for educators and future researchers.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by the Programming Foundation of Ministry of Education, Humanities and Social Science Research Projects in China (Grant Numbers: 14YJA880009); and the “Twelfth Five-Year” Programming of Science of Education in Jiangsu Province, China (Grant Numbers: B-b/2011/01/038).

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  1. Department of Education, Soochow University, No. 1 Wenjing Road, Suzhou, 215123, Jiangsu, People’s Republic of China

    I-Jun Chen, Yu Wu & Bing-Si Wei

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  1. I-Jun Chen
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Chen, IJ., Wu, Y. & Wei, BS. Effects of anxious emotions on the behavioral problems of Chinese children with learning difficulties. Qual Quant 51, 1147–1165 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-016-0322-5

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