Brief report: Attention to positive information mediates the relationship between hope and psychosocial well-being of adolescents.

This study tested the mediating roles of cognitive reappraisal and attentional preferences in the relationship between hope and psychosocial well-being among 712 adolescents. Results of the structural equation modeling revealed that the beneficial relation of hope to subjective happiness, anxiety, depressive symptoms, and interpersonal difficulties was partially mediated by attention to positive information but not cognitive reappraisal. Findings of this study may inform the design of intervention research by highlighting the importance of hopeful thinking style and attention to positive information in mental health of adolescents.

The interaction effect of attentional bias and attentional control on dispositional anxiety among adolescents.

Research has shown that children and adolescents with attentional control deficits tend to have high anxiety and exhibit threat-related selective attentional bias. This study aimed to investigate how positive and negative attentional biases would interact with attentional control on dispositional anxiety. One hundred and twenty participants aged 18 years of age or younger participated in a visual dot-probe task to measure their attentional bias and completed psychological questionnaires to measure their trait anxiety, and attentional control. Mean reaction times to the probe in milliseconds were used to measure attentional bias. Overall, our participants showed a bigger tendency towards attending to positive emotional stimuli than to negative emotional stimuli. Adolescents with high dispositional anxiety showed poorer attentional control. Regression analyses showed that attentional control interact with negative attentional bias to affect anxiety. For participants with high attentional control, higher negative attentional bias was associated with lower trait anxiety. Trait anxiety was not related to negative attentional bias for participants with low attentional control. Positive attentional bias showed no significant relationship with dispositional anxiety, either alone or in interaction with attentional control. Theoretical and clinical implications of the findings are also discussed.

Fear of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) among health care workers.

In this study, the authors examined fear related to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) among 2 samples of hospital staff in Hong Kong. Sample 1 included health care workers (n=82) and was assessed during the peak of the SARS epidemic. Sample 2 included hospital staff who recovered from SARS (n=97). The results show that participants in both samples had equal, if not more, concern about infecting others (especially family members) than being self-infected. Sample 1 participants had stronger fear related to infection than Sample 2 participants, who seemed to be concerned more about other health problems and discrimination. Participants with lower self-efficacy tended to have higher fear related to SARS. Fear related to SARS was also correlated positively with posttraumatic stress symptoms among respondents of Sample 2 (recovered staff). Interventions based on these findings are described.

Emotional Valence, Arousal, and Threat Ratings of 160 Chinese Words among Adolescents.

This study was conducted to provide ratings of valence/pleasantness, arousal/excitement, and threat/potential harm for 160 Chinese words. The emotional valence classification (positive, negative, or neutral) of all of the words corresponded to that of the equivalent English language words. More than 90% of the participants, junior high school students aged between 12 and 17 years, understood the words. The participants were from both mainland China and Hong Kong, thus the words can be applied to adolescents familiar with either simplified (e.g. in mainland China) or traditional Chinese (e.g. in Hong Kong) with a junior secondary school education or higher. We also established eight words with negative valence, high threat, and high arousal ratings to facilitate future research, especially on attentional and memory biases among individuals prone to anxiety. Thus, the new emotional word list provides a useful source of information for affective research in the Chinese language.