Self-control And Internalizing Problems In Adolescents:the Bidirectional Chain Mediation Of Attention Bias And Rumination

Adolescence is a critical period in an individual’s physical and psychological development,and it is also a time of high incidence and frequency of problem behavior.Internalizing problems are more insidious but more prevalent than externalizing problems,which refer to emotional and affective problems such as anxiety,depression and withdrawal.In recent years,much research has also focused on the factors that influence internalizing problems,including external and internal factors,and self-control,as the aspect of internal factors that points to the self,has a very important impact on internalizing problems.Study 1 used a longitudinal study to follow 682 middle and high school students for7 months,using the Trait Self-Control Scale,the Negative Information Attention Scale,the Ruminative Responses Scale,and the Youth Self-Report Questionnaire to explore the effects of trait self-control on internalizing problems,as well as the role of attention bias and rumination.The results showed that T1 trait self-control significantly and negatively predicted T3 internalizing problems;T2 and T3 rumination mediated significantly between T1 trait self-control and T3 internalizing problems;T2 and T3 negative information attention bias and rumination mediated significantly in a bidirectional chain between T1 trait self-control and T3 internalizing problems;but T2 negative information attention bias mediated significantly between T1 trait self-control and T3 internalizing problems was not significant.Study 2 used a questionnaire combined with an experiment to measure adolescents’ level of state self-control using the State Self-Control Capacity Scale,adolescents’ current or recent week’s anxiety and depression using the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory,adolescents’ negative emotional information attention bias using the dot-probe paradigm,and adolescents’ ruminative thinking using the Ruminative Responses Scale to investigate the effects of state selfcontrol on adolescents’ internalizing problems and the role of negative affective attention bias and rumination in this study were investigated.The results showed that state selfcontrol also negatively predicted individuals’ recent internalizing problems;the mediating role of negative emotional attention bias was significant,and the chain mediating role of negative emotional attention bias and ruminative thinking was significant,but the independent mediating role of ruminative thinking between state self-control and internalizing problems was not significant.In summary,both trait self-control and state self-control negatively predict adolescents’ internalizing problems,and negative information attention bias and rumination play a bidirectional chain mediating role in them.