Background

Attentional control refers to the ability to direct, focus, and shift attention voluntarily, and poor attentional control may confer risk for various affective disorders by increasing repetitive negative thinking. Although attentional control has been described as a trait, it is unclear if it is a time-varying (TV) or state-like factor versus a time-invariant (TI) or trait-like personality characteristic.

Methods

In a 6-wave, 5-month longitudinal study, community participants (n = 1,251) completed the Attentional Control Scale (Derryberry & Reed, 2002), the most commonly used measure of attentional control that includes two components: Focusing and Shifting. A latent variable (trait-state-occasion) model was applied to the two components.

Results

The results showed that although estimates of TI factor variance and TV factor variance were both significant for Focusing and Shifting, the proportion of TI factor variance (.81, .77) was significantly greater than the amount of TV factor variance (.18, .22). Furthermore, although TV factor stability was statistically significant for Focusing and Shifting, the size of the coefficients was small to moderate in magnitude. In predicting latent repetitive negative thinking at each of the six time points, regression weights for the attentional control TI factor were significant and larger than those for the TV factor (which were generally not significant).

Limitations

Relatively short timeframe of 5 months and exclusive reliance on self-report measures.

Conclusions

These findings suggest that self-reported attentional control is largely TI and that it is this TI component that predicts repetitive negative thinking.

中文翻译：

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注意控制的纵向特征状态模型：对重复消极思维的影响

背景

注意力控制是指自主引导、集中和转移注意力的能力，注意力控制不佳可能会通过增加重复性消极思维而带来各种情感障碍的风险。尽管注意力控制已被描述为一种特质，但尚不清楚它是时变 (TV) 或状态类因素还是时不变 (TI) 或特质类人格特征。

方法

在一项为期 6 波、为期 5 个月的纵向研究中，社区参与者 ( n  = 1,251) 完成了注意力控制量表 (Derryberry & Reed, 2002)，这是最常用的注意力控制量表，包括两个部分：聚焦和转移。潜在变量（特质-状态-场合）模型应用于这两个组件。

结果

结果表明，虽然 TI 因子方差和 TV 因子方差的估计对于 Focusing 和 Shifting 均显着，但 TI 因子方差的比例 (.81, .77) 显着大于 TV 因子方差的量 (.18, .77)。 22)。此外，尽管 TV 因子稳定性对于聚焦和移动具有统计显着性，但系数的大小在幅度上是小到中等。在预测六个时间点中每个时间点的潜在重复消极思维时，注意力控制 TI 因子的回归权重显着且大于 TV 因子的回归权重（通常不显着）。

限制

相对较短的 5 个月时间框架和完全依赖自我报告措施。

结论

这些发现表明，自我报告的注意力控制主要是 TI，正是这种 TI 组件预测了重复的消极思维。