Zhang YingYing, Sindermann Cornelia, Kendrick Keith M, Becker Benjamin, Montag Christian
Department of Molecular Psychology, Institute of Psychology and Education, Ulm University, Ulm, Germany.
Ministry of Education Key Lab for Neuroinformation, The Clinical Hospital of Chengdu Brain Science Institute, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China.
Front Psychiatry. 2021 Sep 27;12:638655. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2021.638655. eCollection 2021.
Recent evidence demonstrates that Internet Use Disorder tendencies (IUD; formerly known as Internet Addiction) are associated with higher tendencies toward autistic traits. In the present study, we aimed to further explore this association between IUD tendencies and autistic traits in a large cohort of German and Chinese subjects (total = 1,524; mostly student background) who completed the short Internet-Addiction-Test, the Autism-Spectrum-Quotient, and the Internet-Literacy-Questionnaire. Moreover, the present research also enabled us to study potential differences in the investigated variables between the Chinese and German cultures. First, the results indicated higher occurrence of IUD symptoms in China. Moreover, Chinese subjects scored significantly higher on all ILQ dimensions than German participants, with the exception of where the reverse picture appeared. Second, results confirmed a positive association between IUD tendencies and autistic traits both in China and Germany, although effect sizes were low to medium (China: = 0.19 vs. Germany: = 0.36). Going beyond the literature, the present study also assessed individual differences in Internet Literacy and shows in how far variables such as as well as in the realm of the Internet usage influence the aforementioned association between IUD tendencies and autistic traits. Although the present study is limited by being of correlational nature it is discussed how the association between IUD tendencies and autistic traits might be explained.
近期证据表明，网络使用障碍倾向（IUD；原称网络成瘾）与更高的自闭症特质倾向相关。在本研究中，我们旨在进一步探究在一大群德国和中国受试者（共1524人；大多为学生背景）中IUD倾向与自闭症特质之间的这种关联，这些受试者完成了简短的网络成瘾测试、自闭症谱系商数测试以及网络素养问卷。此外，本研究还使我们能够研究中国和德国文化在被调查变量上的潜在差异。首先，结果表明中国IUD症状的发生率更高。此外，除了出现相反情况的维度外，中国受试者在所有网络素养问卷维度上的得分均显著高于德国参与者。其次，结果证实了在中国和德国，IUD倾向与自闭症特质之间均存在正相关，尽管效应量为低到中等（中国：r = 0.19；德国：r = 0.36）。超越现有文献，本研究还评估了网络素养的个体差异，并展示了诸如网络使用领域的 以及 等变量在多大程度上影响上述IUD倾向与自闭症特质之间的关联。尽管本研究因具有相关性而存在局限性，但我们讨论了IUD倾向与自闭症特质之间的关联可能如何得到解释。
