Relationships between negative emotionality and attentional control in effortful control

The present study investigated relationships between negative emotionality (i.e., social anxiety, state anxiety, and depression) and attentional control in undergraduate students (N = 167) by using the effortful control scale (EC), which consists of the following three subscales: inhibitory control, activation control, and attentional control. Depression was negatively correlated with inhibitory and activation controls when controlling for other negative emotional variables, and social anxiety was negatively correlated with attentional control when controlling for depression and state anxiety. This partial correlation was significant even when controlling for other subscales of effortful control. These results suggest that social anxiety is associated with impaired attentional control, while depression is related to the impairment of inhibitory and activation controls.