The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship among attentional control, attentional bias, rumination and adversarial growth. Study 1 was conducted to examin the relationship between attentional control and deliberate rumination. 276 studen...
The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship among attentional control, attentional bias, rumination and adversarial growth. Study 1 was conducted to examin the relationship between attentional control and deliberate rumination. 276 students completed questionnaires about adversity experience, rumination, attentional control, and posttraumatic growth. Study 2 was conducted to examine whether rumination mediates the relationship between attentional bias and posttraumatic stress and growth outcome. 70 students participated in spatial cueing task and emotional memory task. Following two experiments, participants completed the same questionnaire of study 1 and Positive and Negative Affect scale.
Major findings of the study are the following.
First, the moderation effect of attentional control on the relationship between deliberate rumination and adversarial growth was partially significant. This result indicates that attentional control is possible resource to enhance the effect of deliberate rumination and facilitate adversarial growth.
Second, difficulty of disengage from threat stimuli, correct ratio of positive stimuli and correct ratio of negative stimuli were positively correlated with finding new possibilities area. This might mean that confronting threatening situation offers opportunity of adaptive cognitive processing, facilitating adversarial growth.
Third, attentional avoidance from threat stimuli predicted posttraumatic stress symptoms through intrusive rumination. Furthermore, attentional control moderated the effect of intrusive rumination on posttraumatic stress symptoms. This results might suggest that attentional control is a protective factor against the effect of intrusive rumination on posttraumatic stress symptoms.
The implications and limitations of this study and suggestions for future studies were discussed.