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Automatic thoughts as a predictor of internalizing and externalizing problems in Chinese adolescents: A test of the cognitive content‐specificity hypothesis with age effects
Author(s) -
Yu Meng,
Xu Wei,
Xie Qiuyuan,
Zhu Yawen,
Chasson Gregory S.,
Wang Jianping
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
scandinavian journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.743
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1467-9450
pISSN - 0036-5564
DOI - 10.1111/sjop.12373
Subject(s) - psychology , moderation , hostility , anxiety , cognition , developmental psychology , clinical psychology , depression (economics) , content (measure theory) , social anxiety , test (biology) , social psychology , psychiatry , paleontology , biology , economics , macroeconomics , mathematical analysis , mathematics
The main aim of the current study was to test the cognitive content‐specificity hypothesis across internalizing and externalizing problems in Chinese adolescents. The participants consisted of 2,158 adolescents aged 11–19 years from three middle schools, and they completed a number of measures assessing a wide range of automatic thoughts and syndromes related to internalizing and externalizing problems. Multivariate regression analyses demonstrated that thoughts about social threats, personal failure and hostility were the strongest predictors of anxiety, depression, and externalizing problems, respectively. Age was a statistically significant, albeit modest, moderator of the relationship between automatic thoughts about social threat and anxiety. The current study provides support for the cognitive content‐specificity hypothesis in internalizing and externalizing problems in a Chinese sample.