The mediating role of attentional control between negative automatic thoughts and social anxiety among medical freshmen

Abstract

Objective To explore the mediating effect of attentional control between negative automatic thoughts and social anxiety. Methods A total of 1 504 college freshmen of medical university were surveyed with the Interaction Anxiety Scale (IAS), the Automatic Thoughts questionnaire (ATQ) and the Attentional Control Scale (ACS). Results The scores of IAS, ACS and ATQ of medical freshmen were (39.36±8.15), (53.50±7.48) and (48.93±19.72) respectively. Correlation analysis showed that ATQ total score was significantly positively correlated with IAS total score(r=0.313, P<0.01), ATQ total score was significantly negatively correlated with ACS total score(r=-0.275, P<0.01), and ACS score was significantly negatively correlated with IAS total score(r=-0.455, P<0.01). Mediating effect analysis showed that attentional control partly-mediated the relationship between negative automatic thoughts and social anxiety among medical freshmen (χ2/df=1.650, GFI=0.998, AGFI=0.993, RMSEA=0.021), and accounted for 50.8% of the mediating effect. Conclusion Negative automatic thoughts is an important factor which plays direct and indirect roles in social anxiety. Attentional control is the intermediate link between negative automatic thoughts and social anxiety. Key words: Medical freshmen; Social anxiety; Negative automatic thoughts; Attentional control; Mediating effect