E-ISSN : 2733-4538
The present study aimed to investigate self-referential attention bias and memory bias according to social anxiety levels in early adulthood. Participants (N=110) were divided into four groups: high social anxiety (HSA), middle social anxiety (MSA), low social anxiety (LSA), and healthy control (HC). Attention bias was measured using spatial cueing task, and memory bias was measured using a source monitoring task. Stimuli of the tasks were presented under three conditions for the tasks: self-reference (SR1), perception of self by others (SR2), and other-reference (OR). Disengagement bias scores (DBS) were used as an attention bias. Conditional Source Identification Measure (CSIM) was used to measure the ability to recognize the source of the words learned and guess indicator (g) was used to measure the ability to guess the source of words not learned. According to the attention task results, the HSA group had difficulty disengaging attention (DBS) from negative stimuli at SR2 compared to the HC group. In the memory task, the MSA group showed higher accuracy for positive stimulus of OR than the HC group (CSIM). This reflects the result that, unlike the HC group that avoided positive stimulus of OR, the MSA group showed no attention bias. The clinical significance of the findings in this study on the relationship between attention and memory processing in social anxiety groups was discussed by introducing self-referential conditions.
This article consists of three studies designed to validate the Korean version of the Activation for Depression Scale (K-BADS) among three samples of undergraduate students contribute to the study and practical application of behavioral activation treatment in Korea. In Study 1, with an undergraduate sample (n=256), exploratory factor analyses of the K-BADS revealed a four-factor solution: activation (AC), avoidance/rumination (AR), work/social impairment (WS), and social impairment (SI), consistently with the original version of the BADS. The K-BADS showed high internal consistency, corrected item-total correlations, and good test-retest reliability. In Study 2, confirmatory factor analyses indicated that the four-factor structure was replicated with an independent sample (n=272). Furthermore, the K-BADS showed good convergent, discrimination, criterion-related, and incremental validities. In Study 3, participants in the behavioral activation intervention (n=10) showed a significantly greater increase in behavioral activation levels as measured with the K-BADS total and subscales, and decreased depressive symptoms. This finding indicates that the K-BADS total and subscales are sensitive to assessing changes following behavioral activation intervention. Finally, the results of these studies suggest that the K-BADS is a reliable and valid instrument for measuring the behavioral activation level of undergraduate students in Korea.
Distress overtolerance consists in a tendency to tolerate extreme levels of distress despite the negative consequences on one’s well-being. The present study examined and validated the Korean version of the Distress Overtolerance Scale (Gorey, Rojas, & Bornovalova, 2016). For this purpose, survey data from 286 university students were analyzed. A confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to identify the latent structure of the Korean version of the Distress Overtolerance Scale (K-DOS). Further, its convergent and discriminant validities were examined through a correlation analysis including the Grit Scale, Depression and Anxiety items of the Brief Symptoms Inventory, Cognitive Flexibility Scale, and Failed Control items of the Impaired Control Scale. The results of the confirmatory factor analysis based on a two-factor structure supported the validity, goodness of fit, and internal consistency of the K-DOS. Additionally, distress overtolerance showed a positive correlation with depression and anxiety, and a negative correlation with distress tolerance and cognitive flexibility. These findings suggest that the KDOS is a reliable and valid measure. This study also suggests that if the level of tolerating emotional distress is exceedingly high, it can be related to maladaptive psychological symptoms, including depression or anxiety. Finally, the limitations of the present study and suggestions for future studies are discussed.
This study examined the role of cognitive factors in complicated grief and posttraumatic growth in young adults who experienced parental death during adolescence. Specifically, using a three-month short-term longitudinal design, we examined the mediating role of meaning reconstruction and traumatized self-system in the effect of event centrality on complicated grief or posttraumatic growth. Adults aged 19 to 29 years who experienced parental death during adolescence were recruited for this study. Two hundred participants responded to the baseline online survey (Time 1), and 150 completed a follow-up survey after three months (Time 2). As expected, event centrality was positively associated with complicated grief or posttraumatic growth at Times 1 and 2. The test of a mediation model for complicated grief indicated that neither traumatized self-system nor meaning reconstruction mediated the relationship between event centrality and complicated grief at Time 2. However, higher levels of traumatized self-system were cross-sectionally associated with complicated grief at Time 1. Conversely, both traumatized self-system and meaning reconstruction significantly mediated the relationship between event centrality and posttraumatic growth at Time 2. These findings suggest that reducing traumatized self-system and enhancing meaning reconstruction could help develop posttraumatic growth whereas such intervention may not help reduce complicated grief longitudinally.
Depression and anxiety symptoms frequently co-occur. Research suggests that a common shared symptom — repetitive negative thinking (RNT) — is a vulnerability factor that develops and prolongs symptoms of affective disorders. A dispositional factor that increases RNT is neuroticism. The mental noise hypothesis of neuroticism suggests that its volatile and reactive nature causes attentional control deficits. As theories of RNT, specifically regarding rumination and worry, indicate such deficits as underlying causes, it is hypothesized that the deficits may mediate the relationship between neuroticism and RNT. This study investigated whether attentional focusing and shifting mediates the relationship between neuroticism and RNT (worry and rumination). Results showed mediational effects of focusing on rumination, while the results on worry were not significant. Neuroticism has been discussed as a temperamental risk factor that increases vulnerability to psychopathology. Future research should employ longitudinal designs and behavioral measures to overcome this study’s limitations.