Measures Of Trait Anxiety Research Articles

The risks of unconcern: low sensitivity to threat can have unfortunate consequences

Each one of us is confronted with warnings of danger or threats to wellbeing in our everyday life, whether in the form of certain road signs, Public Service Announcements, ominous changes in bodily functioning, or cautionary tales heard from family or friends. There is great inter-individual variation in how people respond to such threats, with some people habitually tending to ignore or dismiss them, often to their peril. The first purpose of the present paper is to review several studies showing that individuals—most often men—who score very low on measures of trait anxiety are more likely to engage in behaviors that could jeopardize their physical wellbeing. The general hypothesis that is derived from that review is that when attention to everyday threats is chronically muted by way of a dispositional trait, the likelihood of proceeding down some dangerous path is increased. Those findings are then discussed within the broader context of personality theory to highlight the importance of recognizing the bipolarity of common traits. Here the case is made for replacing the term trait anxiety with the term threat sensitivity in order to capture the full breadth of this basic personality variable. A discussion of the neurobiological underpinnings of threat sensitivity is then presented with an emphasis on individual and sex differences in the workings of the defensive survival circuitry. Taken together, this paper has implications for two subfields within psychology. For the area of personality theory, this paper provides support for the adaptationist view with the argument that low threat sensitivity has both adaptive and maladaptive potential. For the area of health psychology, it is argued that some individuals who demonstrate a habitual tendency to neglect their physical wellbeing may be acting—at least in part—in accordance with their innate neurobiological constitution.

Exploring statistics anxiety and self-efficacy in psychology undergraduate students

Statistics anxiety is experienced by a large proportion of psychology students, even though conducting statistical analyses is a fundamental skill for students to acquire. The research on statistics anxiety has tended to explore either dispositional factors (e.g. personality) or situational factors (e.g. teacher effects). One potential predictor that has not yet been considered is statistical self-efficacy; the belief that one can successfully complete statistical tasks. The present study aims to clarify whether statistical self-efficacy is a predictor of any aspects of statistics anxiety in psychology students. In this study 100 undergraduate students (89% female identifying), in the second and third (final) year of a psychology degree in the UK, completed the Statistics Anxiety Rating Scale (STARS), the Statistics Self-efficacy scale (SSE), and a measure of trait anxiety. A hierarchical regression showed a significant negative relationship between statistical self-efficacy and all aspects of statistics anxiety, showing that students who are more confident in their statistical skills experience less statistics anxiety. Findings are discussed in relation to both understanding statistics anxiety and developing interventions to alleviate statistics anxiety, such as mentoring for students with diagnosed clinical anxiety conditions or interventions that aim to improve a student’s self-efficacy.

Between Scylla and Charybdis: Fixed-Ratio Avoidance Response Effort and Unavoidable Shock Extinction in Humans

Avoidance of potential threat may become maladaptive when it is indiscriminate and resistant to change. Here, we investigated the resistance to change of high and low avoidance response effort when avoidance extinction involved unavoidable presentations of the aversive event (shock) in humans. Following fear conditioning, participants prevented upcoming shock delivery by responding on high (i.e., fixed ratio, FR-20) and low (FR-5) negative reinforcement schedules. Next, noneliminable shock was used for an avoidance extinction procedure whereby responding was followed by, rather than prevented, shock. During a subsequent standard extinction and response prevention test phase, we found that High effort (FR-20) avoidance would be more readily extinguished than Low effort (FR-5) avoidance. It was also predicted that fear, threat expectancy, and psychophysiological (skin conductance) responses would decrease on avoidable trials and increase on unavoidable trials before extinguishing to low levels. It was found that in the final extinction re-test phase when avoidance was possible, responding increased, particularly for low effort cues. Both fear and expectancy remained high. Individual differences on clinically relevant measures of trait anxiety, intolerance of uncertainty and experiential avoidance were associated with greater levels of fear and threat expectancy. Overall, unavoidable shock extinction may hold promise for further translational investigations of avoidance learning, extinction, and clinical treatment development.

Individual Differences in Psychological Stress Associated with Data Breach Experiences

Data breach incidents are now a regular occurrence, with millions of people affected worldwide. Few studies have examined the psychological aspects of data breach experiences, however, or the individual differences that influence how people react to these events. In this study, we examined the psychological stress associated with a personal experience with a data breach and several individual differences hypothesized to modulate such stress (age, gender, digital security awareness and expertise, trait anxiety, negative emotionality, and propensity to worry). A student sample (N = 166) and a community sample (N = 359) completed an online survey that asked participants to describe their most serious data breach and then complete the Impact of Events Scale—Revised (IES-R) to answer specific questions about the nature of the stress they experienced after the breach. Standard measures of trait anxiety, negative emotionality, and propensity to worry were also completed. A Data Breach Severity Index (DBSI) was created to quantify the invasiveness and consequences of each participant’s data breach. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were used to identify demographic variables and psychological characteristics predictive of IES-R scores while controlling for DBSI scores. As expected, more invasive and consequential data breaches were associated with higher IES-R scores (greater data-breach-induced stress). Women had higher IES-R scores than men, and this difference persisted after controlling for gender differences in anxiety, negative emotionality, and propensity to worry. Greater daily social media use was associated with higher IES-R scores, whereas higher digital security expertise was associated with lower IES-R scores. The results illuminate several relationships between demographic and psychological characteristics and data-breach-induced stress that should be investigated further.

Effect of Self-Differentiation on Trait Anxiety and Authenticity of University Students

The aim of this study is to analyze the effect of self-differentiation on trait anxiety and authenticity in university students. The sample consists of a total of 333 university students (244 female and 89 male) studying in various departments of a state university who volunteered to participate in the study. Differentiation of Self Inventory—Short Form (DSI-SF) was used to measure self-differentiation levels; “Trait Anxiety Scale” was used to measure trait anxiety levels; and “Authenticity Scale” was used to measure the authenticity levels of university students. The results obtained were analyzed both with SPSS and AMOS programs. The correlation between variables was observed with SPSS analysis. The analyses were tested at .05 and .01 significance levels using SPSS 25.0 package programme. The PROCESS (Model 4) Macro was used in SPSS to examine the mediating effect of anxiety in the relationship between self-differentiation and authenticity. The findings of the research indicated that the relationship between self-differentiation and authenticity in university students was partially mediated. The study also demonstrated the positive predictive value of self-differentiation at the level of authenticity in university students. The findings were then discussed in relation to the existing literature, with some suggestions for future research made.

Direct Losses and Media Exposure to Death: The Long-Term Effect of Mourning during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Background: The social distancing policies adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic forced many individuals to confront their mortality and worry about losing loved ones, making it impossible to say goodbye to them properly. Those not directly experiencing loss were inundated with information about COVID-19-related deaths throughout social media, leading to vicarious grief. This study delved into the long-term effects of direct and vicarious mourning on people's mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. Method: A sample of 171 adults (65% female) aged 19-66 years (Mage = 25.8, SD = 8.57) voluntarily participated in an online survey assessing self-reported psychological measures of complicated grief, stress, depression, dispositional neuroticism, trait anxiety, and situational anxiety. Results: MANOVAs revealed that direct mourning experiences had an extremely severe impact on anxiety, stress, and fear of COVID-19, and a moderate effect on those without personal losses. Indeed, participants reporting high media exposure showed higher scores of depression and stress. Conclusions: Findings from the current study displayed that during the COVID-19 pandemic, people engaged more in proximal defenses than distal ones, taking health-protective measures, experiencing increased anxiety levels toward virus infection, and feeling distressed. Additionally, vicarious mourning was more strongly associated with depression due to emotional empathy with others.

Examining Mental Health Benefits of a Brief Online Mindfulness Intervention: A Randomised Controlled Trial

ObjectivesThe objective of this study is to assess the effectiveness of a brief online mindfulness intervention in reducing depression, rumination, and trait anxiety among university students.MethodThe sample consisted of 486 participants including 205 (42%) in the experimental group and 281 (58%) in the control group. For a period of 28 days, participants in the experimental group engaged in daily mindfulness meditation during their free time. Additionally, they practised mindfulness meditation once a week during regular class hours. The control group was involved in regular class activities without practising mindfulness. The outcomes were assessed at pre- and post-intervention using well-validated measures of mindfulness, depression, rumination, and trait anxiety. The data were analysed using mixed-model ANCOVA while controlling for baseline mindfulness levels as co-variates.ResultsOur results demonstrated the effectiveness of a brief online mindfulness intervention in reducing depression, rumination, and trait anxiety of university students. Moreover, higher baseline mindfulness levels predicted better effectiveness of the brief online mindfulness intervention at an individual level and were inversely linked to depression, trait anxiety, and rumination.ConclusionsThis study conclusively demonstrated that a brief online mindfulness intervention significantly reduces depression, rumination, and trait anxiety among university students, with reductions observed in specific measures of these conditions, highlighting the role of initial mindfulness levels in moderating outcomes. These findings underscore the effectiveness of brief online mindfulness programs in mitigating mental health issues in a university setting and the importance of baseline psychological states in intervention outcomes.PreregistrationThis study is not preregistered

Psychometric properties of the Chinese version of Sport Anxiety Scale-2.

The Sport Anxiety Scale-2 (SAS-2) is a validated measure of sports trait anxiety, with promising psychometric properties. However, its cross-cultural applicability in Chinese samples remains unexplored. Thus, the primary objectives of this study were twofold: to translate the SAS-2 into Chinese and assess the psychometric properties of the Chinese version. In Study 1, we initiated the translation of the SAS-2 into Chinese. This assessment involved bilingual Chinese students proficient in both English and Chinese. Additionally, we conducted a cross-linguistic measurement invariance analysis. In Study 2, we delved into the psychometric properties of the Chinese SAS-2 using a sample of Chinese student athletes. This examination encompassed an evaluation of its factor structure, convergent and discriminant validity, and measurement invariance across genders. Our findings in Study 1 indicated no significant differences in item scores between the Chinese SAS-2 and the English version, and measurement invariance across languages. In Study 2, we uncovered that the Chinese SAS-2 and its factors exhibited excellent reliability, with Cronbach's alpha values exceeding 0.80. Confirmatory factor analyses upheld the original three-factor model, demonstrating acceptable model fit indices (CFI = 0.96, TLI = 0.93, RMSEA = 0.08). Furthermore, all three factors of the Chinese SAS-2 displayed significant and positive correlations with athlete burnout and State-Trait anxiety. Additionally, this study elucidated the mediating role of Concentration Disruption (Somatic anxiety and Concentration Disruption) in the relationship between the Trait (State) anxiety, and athlete burnout. Moreover, we identified measurement invariance of the Chinese version of the SAS-2 across genders. Finally, female college athletes exhibited significantly higher scores in somatic anxiety and worry compared to their male counterparts. In sum, our findings affirm that the Chinese version of the SAS-2 demonstrates robust reliability and correlates effectively with related criteria, thus validating its suitability for use in a Chinese context.

Association between Val158Met polymorphism in the COMT gene with anxiety and heart rate variability in children with irritable bowel syndrome

The aim of this study was to examine the peculiarities of trait anxiety and heart rate variability parameters as well as their relationship depending on the catechol O-methyltransferase (COMT) gene Val158Met polymorphism in children with irritable bowel syndrome. Materials and methods. A total of 26 children aged 6–12 years with a verified diagnosis of irritable bowel syndrome according to the Rome IV criteria were examined. Beforehand, all the patients underwent molecular genetic testing for the COMT Val158met single nucleotide polymorphism by using the polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism method. Heart rate variability was analyzed via cardiointervalography (Neurosoft) based on short five-minute resting-state ECG recordings. The CMAS (Children’s Manifest Anxiety Scale) test was used to measure trait anxiety levels. The Pearson’s test was used to assess correlations between heart rate variability parameters and anxiety levels. Data were processed using Microsoft Excel 2016 and analyzed with GraphPad (Prism 5.0). Results. Depending on the functional COMT Val158met polymorphism, all the patients were allocated to 3 groups: 8 children with 472 GA (Val/Met) COMT genotype; 10 children with 472 AA (Met/Met) genotype; 8 children with 472 GG (Val/Val) genotype. Time and frequency domain parameters of heart rate variability were significantly different in each group. The highest level of anxiety and the largest percentage of LF component (mainly sympathetic activity) in the structure of heart rate variability was noted among Met/Met carriers. Val/Val carriers had a significantly lower anxiety level and an autonomic imbalance with a higher percentage of HF component (parasympathetic activity). Positive correlations between trait anxiety and heart rate variability parameters were found only in Val/Val and Val/Met groups. Conclusions. Our study has revealed the influence of the COMT Val158met polymorphism on the level of trait anxiety and heart rate variability parameters. It is important for a better understanding of the gut-brain axis dysregulation and impaired stress resilience in children with irritable bowel syndrome. Also, these data could be used to improve current schemes for the treatment of irritable bowel syndrome, supplementing them with activation therapy, psychotherapy, psychopharmacotherapy.

Empowering the Victims of Bullying: The ‘Bullying: The Power to Cope’ Program

This study replicates an earlier study (Markopolous & Bernard, 2015) that evaluated the impact of the program, Bullying: The Power to Cope (Bernard, 2019) on potential victim’s cognitive, emotional and behavioral responses. The program is aimed at teaching student rational beliefs and coping skills they can employ to cope with various types of bullying. In the present study, participating classes were randomly allocated to either an experimental or control condition. The study conducted in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, consisted 115 participants (n = 55, experimental group; n = 60 in the control group), 57 males and 58 females, aged 10 to 14 years of age. Self-report data was collected pre- and post-test, measuring children’s cognitive, behavioral and emotional coping responses to four written bullying vignettes. Measures of state and trait anxiety were also collected at pre- and post-tests. Results revealed students in the experimental group significantly improved in cognitive and emotional coping responses compared with students in the control group. Nonsignificant differences were found between males and females and between primary and secondary school students on their response to the program. State anxiety did not influence responsiveness to the program, but students with lower levels of trait anxiety (pre-test) made significantly greater improvements on emotional coping responses compared to students with higher levels of trait anxiety. Implications of these findings are discussed as well as limitations and considerations for future research.

Psychopathic Traits in a Swedish Court-Ordered Forensic Sample: Preferential Associations of Boldness, Meanness, and Disinhibition.

The construct validity of the triarchic psychopathy model has yet to be evaluated in the Swedish forensic psychiatric context. We examined associations between the three phenotypic constructs of the triarchic model of psychopathy (i.e., boldness, meanness, disinhibition), self-assessed empathy and anxiety, and clinical variables in 91 individuals undergoing pretrial forensic psychiatric evaluation in Sweden. Participants completed the Triarchic Psychopathy Measure (TriPM) and self-report measures of empathy and anxiety. Clinical variables, including psychiatric diagnoses and criminal behavior, were collected from the forensic psychiatric evaluations (FPE). All three subscales of the TriPM displayed significant and predominantly anticipated correlations with empathy and trait anxiety measures. TriPM Disinhibition was the only subscale with significant associations with the clinical variables collected from the FPEs. The results provide evidence for the reliability and construct validity of the Swedish translation of the TriPM in a pretrial forensic setting.

Measuring State and Trait Anxiety: An Application of Multidimensional Item Response Theory.

The State-Trait Inventory for Cognitive and Somatic Anxiety (STICSA) is a widely used measure of state and trait anxiety. Within the Classical Testing Theory model, consistent findings provide support for its multidimensional factor structure, discriminant, convergent, and nomological validity, as well as age and gender invariance, across healthy and clinical samples. Nevertheless, some issues regarding STICSA dimensionality and item-scale composition remain unresolved (e.g., both bifactor and two-factor models were found to fit data equally well). The goal of this study was to investigate the STICSA's dimensionality within the Item Response Theory, and to assess the tenability of the bifactor model as a plausible model over the multidimensional model. The sample consisted of 3338 Italian participants (58.21% females; 41.79% males) with an average age of 35.65 years (range: 18-99; SD = 20.25). Both bifactor and two-correlated dimensions of the STICSA scales were confirmed to fit data by applying the multidimensional Item Response Theory (mIRT). While the bifactor model showed better fit indices, the multidimensional model was more accurate and precise (0.86-0.88) in estimating state and trait latent anxiety. A further comparison between multidimensional item parameters revealed that the multidimensional and bifactor models were equivalent. Findings showed that the STICSA is an accurate and precise instrument for measuring somatic and cognitive symptomatology dimensions within state and trait anxiety. The use of the state/trait total score requires special attention from the clinicians and researchers to avoid bias in the psychodiagnostic assessment.

Trait-Anxious People Take Longer to Search for Happy Faces in the Presence of Neutral and Fearful Distractors

A large body of evidence suggests that processing of affective information is typically disrupted in anxiety. It has also been hypothesized that anxious individuals are less able to evaluate contextual cues and to respond in an adaptive way to stress. In the present study, 25 participants (16 females; 9 males) scoring high (scores of 45 or above) and 26 participants (13 females; 13 males) scoring low (scores of 35 and below) on a standardized measure of trait anxiety performed an emotion search task to investigate attentional biases when the task provides an explicit emotional context. An emotional context was set in each block by asking participants to look as quickly as possible at a face expressing a specific emotion, while eye movements were being recorded. On each trial, two faces appeared, one of them expressing the target emotion and the other one expressing a distractor emotion. High trait-anxious participants showed slower response times (time to look at the instructed emotion), regardless of the affective context, compared to the control group. Additionally, we found slower responses to happy faces (positive context) in the anxious group in the presence of neutral and fearful distractors. Cognitive control may therefore be disrupted in anxiety, as anxious people take longer to process (search for) happy faces, presumably because attentional resources are drawn by neutral and fearful distractors. Those differences were not observed in a simple reaction times task, which suggests that attentional biases, and not differential processing of low-level facial features, are responsible for those differences.

A longitudinal investigation of the relationship between Chinese counseling trainees’ anxiety and client symptom outcome

ABSTRACT Objective This study examined the reciprocal association between counseling trainees’ trait and state anxiety and their clients’ symptom distress and the mediating effects of working alliance. Method Data set included 6,888 sessions conducted by 211 master’s level beginning therapists with their 1,216 clients in China. Trainees completed a measure of trait anxiety at the beginning of practicum. Before each session, trainees completed the state anxiety measure and clients reported their symptom distress; and after every session, both the trainees and clients rated their perceived working alliance. Results Multilevel modeling showed that (a) Therapist trainees’ level of trait anxiety did not predict overall client outcome in terms of symptom reduction. (b) At the session-to-session level, higher therapist state anxiety before one session significantly predicted higher client distress before the next session, and higher client distress before one session significantly predicted higher therapist state anxiety before the subsequent session. (c) Therapist and client perceptions of working alliance were both significant mediators of the reciprocal relationship between therapist state anxiety and client distress. Conclusions Findings suggested that it was trainees’ state anxiety, instead of trait anxiety, that reciprocally related to client symptom outcome at the session-to-session level. Implications for clinical training were discussed. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS A generally more anxious therapist trainee does not seem to have worse overall clinical effectiveness compared with a generally less anxious trainee. From session to session, trainees who experience less state anxiety tend to establish a stronger working alliance with their clients, which leads to more client symptom relief. Evidence suggests against selecting trainees based on their trait anxiety level; but it is recommended that supervisors help trainees manage their state anxiety before a session.

Autistic traits are associated with enhanced working memory capacity for abstract visual stimuli

We tested whether the association between autistic traits and enhanced performance in visual-perceptual tasks extends to visual working memory capacity. We predicted that any positive effect of autistic traits on visual working memory performance would be greatest during domain-specific tasks, in which visual resources must be relied upon. We used a visual ‘matrix’ task, involving recall of black-and-white chequered patterns which increased in size, to establish participants' capacity (span). We assessed 144 young adults' (M = 22.0 years, SD = 2.5) performance on abstract, ‘low semantic’ versus ‘high semantic’ task versions. The latter offered multimodal coding due to the availability of long-term memory resources that could supplement visual working memory. Participants also completed measures of autistic traits and trait anxiety. Autistic traits, especially Attention to Detail, Attention Switching, and Communication, positively predicted visual working memory capacity, specifically in the low semantic task, which relies on visual working memory resources. Autistic traits are therefore associated with enhanced processing and recall of visual information. The benefit is removed, however, when multimodal coding may be incorporated, emphasising the visual nature of the benefit. Strengths in focused attention to detail therefore appear to benefit domain-specific visual working memory task performance.

Social Distancing and Shopping Behaviour: The Role of Anxiety, Attention, and Awareness on Safety Preferences while Queuing during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic increased global anxiety, and many people shopped less frequently. This study quantifies customer preferences in where to shop while following social distancing regulations, specifically focusing on customers' anxiety. Collecting data online from 450 UK participants, we measured trait anxiety, COVID-19 anxiety, queue awareness, and queue safety preferences. Confirmatory factor analyses were used to develop novel queue awareness and queue safety preference variables from new items. Path analyses tested the hypothesised relationships between them. Queue awareness and COVID-19 anxiety were positive predictors of queue safety preference, with queue awareness partially mediating the effect of COVID-19 anxiety. These results suggest that customers' preferences for shopping at one business and not another may depend on safe queueing and waiting conditions, especially in those more anxious about COVID-19 transmission. Interventions that target highly aware customers are suggested. Limitations are acknowledged and areas for future development are outlined.

RESILIENCE AS A PREDICTOR OF TRAIT ANXIETY IN LATE ADOLESCENTS WITH CHILDHOOD TRAUMA

Childhood trauma experiences can produce negative contributions to mental health such as anxiety, which can develop into trait anxiety. The increase in trait anxiety can be reduced by the presence of resilience in a person. This study aims to determine the effect of resilience as a predictor of trait anxiety in late adolescents with childhood trauma. This study involved 158 late adolescents with childhood trauma, consisting of 111 girls and 47 boys with the purposive sampling method. The measuring instrument used in this study is the Indonesian translation of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form (CTQ-SF) for measuring childhood trauma, The Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) for measuring resilience, and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory Form Y-2 (STAI Y-2) for measuring trait anxiety. Simple linear regression was used to analyze the data and obtained a significant result (p = 0,001 < 0,05, t = -5,081). The result of the study is resilience can predict the emergence of trait anxiety in late adolescents with childhood trauma, which indicates that the higher the level of resilience in a person, the lower the level of trait anxiety that exists, and vice versa.

Úzkosť a úzkostlivosť študentov, absolventov a profesionálnych tlmočníkov

This paper focuses on anxiety in interpreting. The main objective was to find out how anxiety differs among interpreting trainees, recent graduates, and professional interpreters with shorter and longer experience. The research instrument used was the STAI – the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. The data indicated that the interpreting trainees and professional interpreters with both shorter and longer experience scored comparably on the X-1 form (state anxiety) and X-2 form (trait anxiety). The recent graduates differed substantially from the other groups, scoring much lower on both the state and trait anxiety measures. This could be due to the small group size, which could have caused skewing of the results. The majority of the groups were characterised by higher trait anxiety and lower state anxiety scores (the exception being the professional interpreters with longer experience, although the difference was minimal). In terms of gender, noticeable differences were only observed for the X-2 form, with females appearing more anxious than males. These findings, although they only apply to a small research sample, suggest a similarity between skilful interpreting trainees and professional interpreters.

Independent Associations Between Trait-Anger, Depressive Symptoms and Preclinical Atherosclerotic Progression.

Previous research from our group found that recent depressive symptoms were associated with 3-year change in carotid intima-media thickness (CA-IMT), a biomarker of cardiovascular disease risk, in an initially healthy sample of older adults. Trait measures of anxiety, anger, and hostility did not predict 3-year CA-IMT progression in that report. The current study sought to reexamine these associations at a 6-year follow-up point. Two-hundred seventy-eight participants (151 males, mean age = 60.68 years) from the original sample completed an additional IMT reading 6 years following the initial baseline assessment. Though not significant at 3-years, trait-anger emerged as a predictor of IMT progression at the 6-year point. When examined in separate regression models, both depression and trait-anger (but not anxiety or hostility) predicted 6-year IMT change (b = .017, p = .002; b = .029, p = .01, respectively). When examined concurrently, both depression and anger were independently associated with 6-year IMT progression (b = .016, p = .010, b = .028, p = .022, respectively). Exploratory analyses suggest that the relative contributions of anger and depression may differ for males and females. The use of sequential follow-ups is relatively unique in this literature, and our results suggest a need for further research on the timing and duration of psychosocial risk exposures in early stages of cardiovascular disease.

The Toronto Mindfulness Scale and the State Mindfulness Scale: psychometric properties of the Spanish versions.

The Toronto Mindfulness Scale (TMS) and the State Mindfulness Scale (SMS) are two relevant self-report measures of state mindfulness. The purpose of this study was to examine the internal structure and to offer evidence of the reliability and validity of the Spanish versions of the TMS and SMS. Data from six distinct non-clinical samples in Spain were obtained. They responded to the TMS (n = 119), SMS (n = 223), and measures of trait mindfulness, decentering, non-attachment, depression, anxiety, stress, positive and negative affect, self-criticism, and self-reassurance. The internal structure of the TMS and SMS was analyzed through confirmatory factor analysis. Reliability, construct validity, and sensitivity to change analyses were performed. The correlated two-factor structure (curiosity and decentering) was the best-fitting model for the TMS (CFI = 0.932; TLI = 0.913; RMSEA = 0.100 [0.077-0.123]; WRMR = 0.908). The bifactor structure (general factor, mindfulness of body, and mindfulness of mind) was the best-fitting model for the SMS (CFI = 0.961; TLI = 0.950; RMSEA = 0.096 [0.086-0.106]; WRMR = 0.993). Adequate reliability was found for both measures. The reliability of the SMS specific factors was very poor when controlling for the general factor. The patterns of correlations were mainly as expected and according to previous literature. The TMS and SMS have been able to detect state mindfulness changes after different meditation practices. Validity evidence is provided to support the use of the TMS and SMS in Spanish populations, though the reliability of the SMS specific factors merit revision.