Participant recruitment and baseline collection in Xinyang started in March 2021, and in Jiaxing in May 2021. This intervention study took place in the students’ school during their regular school hours over the course of about 4 weeks.
Participants who met inclusion criteria were gathered in their school computer labs before training and were asked to complete the computerized baseline assessments including WSAP-H, CATQ, and RPSQ. Then they were randomized to receive either CBM-I training or PCT training via an online random sequence generator from www.randomizer.org. The experimenters who randomly grouped the participants did not take part in the subsequent intervention implementation and data collection. Over the course of the following training month (4 weeks), participants received their assigned computer program trainings in the school computer labs individually once a week. After each training, students could play computer games or something else for a maximum of 10 min under the supervision of adult experimenters, to heighten their motivation to participate in the study. Following the completion of the final training session, participants were requested to complete the same baseline assessments as post-training outcome measures. One week after the post-assessment, follow-up data were collected for the same measurements as baseline assessments. Additionally, participants assigned to the PCT were offered CBM-I after post-assessment.