Thought Control Ability Questionnaire – Chinese Version

Description

In real life, the process of growth is always accompanied by various setbacks and difficulties. Individuals may experience negative events, such as childhood abuse or neglect by parents, bullying from classmates after starting school, academic and peer pressure during adolescence, workplace stress after entering the job market, and family pressure after starting a family. They may also face unexpected significant life events, such as the death of a loved one or family breakdown. Negative life events are often associated with negative memories, and the intrusion of negative memories is a key trigger for psychological disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and depression. However, not all negative experiences lead to psychological disorders, indicating that there are other factors modulating the relationship between negative memories and adverse psychological outcomes. Negative life events may undergo selective processing by the self-concept, affecting psychological and behavioral outcomes. This means that individuals possess subjectivity and agency; when faced with negative life events, they develop coping strategies based on self-protection mechanisms, such as repression, actively forgetting unimportant or distressing information or negative memories. This proactive adjustment can mitigate the adverse effects of negative events on mental health. The phenomenon of active forgetting is common in life; for example, one might forget about an argument with a boss to focus on current work, benefiting cohabitation with the boss. Similarly, a person recently experiencing a breakup may engage in busy life and work to avoid dwelling on the pain of the breakup. Current views suggest that proactive forgetting of negative memories has positive adaptive significance for individual survival and development. Proactive suppression abilities alleviate the impact of traumatic experiences and high neuroticism on depressive emotional states, with consistent results observed in both normal and depressed subject groups. The proactive suppression capacity behind negative memory repression can, to some extent, mitigate the negative effects of trauma and high neuroticism on depressive emotions, regardless of whether the individuals are normal or depressed.

When individuals view negative events from a positive perspective, stronger activation in the left hippocampus correlates with lower chances of experiencing adverse emotional states. Actively suppressing personal negative memories can help reduce negative emotions such as depression and maintain psychological health. Remembering necessary memories aid in summarizing past experiences and looking forward to the future; likewise, forgetting unnecessary memories is crucial for maintaining the flexibility of the memory system.

Authors and Contact Email

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Purpose

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Test Year

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Administration Method and Scoring

Active forgetting perspectives differ from traditional theories that consider forgetting to be passive. The active forgetting process emphasizes memory suppression interference leading to forgetting as a subjective process, which is a conscious update of the memory system resulting from the selective forgetting of unnecessary information. Direct suppression of the memory retrieval process leads to forgetting, and there exists an executive control cognitive mechanism requiring a good level of executive control to complete the memory suppression process. As age increases, executive functions exhibit an inverted U-shape change, peaking around age 20, indicating that proactive memory suppression capability inversely relates to age, with the best performance observed at around 20 years old.

Reliability and Validity

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Factors and Subscales

The study utilized the White Bear Suppression Inventory (WBSI) developed by Wegner and Zanakos (1994) to measure individuals’ tendencies to actively suppress unwanted memories. Although this questionnaire aims to assess an individual’s tendency to suppress thoughts, numerous studies have shown that its results can also represent the level of thought suppression failure. Therefore, the WBSI score correlates with emotional disorders; individuals with difficulty suppressing thoughts are more likely to frequently experience the intrusive nature of unwanted memories, resulting in higher vulnerability to emotional disorders.

To further differentiate individuals’ memory control capabilities from suppression tendencies, the Thought Control Ability Questionnaire (TCAQ) was developed by Luciano et al. (2005) to measure individuals’ control abilities over memories in daily life. This questionnaire consists of 25 items, including statements such as “I often cannot avoid having upsetting thoughts (reverse scoring),” “I can control my thoughts even under pressure,” with a scoring range of five points, where higher scores represent stronger abilities to suppress unwanted memories. This questionnaire has been widely used in research and demonstrates good retest reliability and validity, capable of predicting individual performance in various active forgetting tasks.

Keywords

主动遗忘 (Proactive Forgetting)
负性记忆 (Negative Memory)
思维控制 (Thought Control)
情绪障碍 (Emotional Disorders)
心理健康 (Mental Health)

Items in Chinese

1. 我经常难以入睡，因为我的脑子里总是想着与自己相关的问题。
2. 我常常难以回避一些令我烦躁的想法。
3. 尽管有些人对我的批评并不公平，但我还是情不自禁的去想他们可能是对的。
4. 即使是在感到有压力的时候，我也能控制自己的想法。
5. 我经常谴责自己的想法和行为。
6. 无论多么小的挫折都会让我难以承受。
7. 当我决定不去想某事时，我通常可以做到。
8. 我不断地评估自己的想法和行动是否合适。
9. 对我来说，停止某些想法是很容易的。
10. 经历一段尴尬、糟糕或痛苦的经历后，我会在很长的一段时间里感到焦虑、沮丧或悲伤。
11. 对我来说，摆脱令我烦恼的想法很容易。
12. 一些想法或画面经常占据我的思想。
13. 我总是会情不自禁的想起过去经历过的一些不好的事情。
14. 生活中很少有事情能让我感到烦恼。
15. 如果和（伴侣、父母、朋友…）间发生争执，我往往会在接下来的几天里无法释怀。
16. 我认为我是一个善于控制自己积极和消极情绪的人。
17. 我的思想对我的控制大于我对它的控制 。
18. 我无法避免一些想法进入我的脑海。
19. 我无法控制我的想法。
20. 我通常不会被不愉快的想法击垮。
21. 我无法摆脱某些想法：例如“我是失败者”、“我没用”、“我一点也不好”，等等。
22. 我觉得别人能比我更好地控制自己的想法。
23. 如果我与某人发生矛盾和冲突，我就会不停地回想这件事。
24. 我可以轻易地摆脱不愉快的想法或画面。
25. 我很有耐心，而且不会轻易的失控。

Items in English

1. It is often difficult for me to fall asleep because my mind keeps going over personal problems.
2. I often cannot avoid having upsetting thoughts.
3. Although some people criticize me unfairly, I can’t help thinking they might be right.
4. I manage to have control over my thoughts even when under stress.
5. I constantly censure my thoughts and actions.
6. Any setback overwhelms me, no matter how small.
7. I am usually successful when I decide not to think about something.
8. I constantly evaluate whether my thoughts and actions are appropriate.
9. It is very easy for me to stop having certain thoughts.
10. I feel worried, frustrated or sad for a long time after having an embarrassing, troublesome or painful experience.
11. It is easy for me to free myself of troublesome thoughts.
12. Frequently, some thoughts or images take over my mind.
13. There are negative things in my past that I cannot help remembering.
14. There are few things in life that manage to trouble me.
15. I haven’t been able to get the argument I had with (my partner, my parents, a friend…) out of my head for several days.
16. I consider myself a person who is good at controlling positive and negative emotions.
17. My thoughts control me more than I control them.
18. There are some thoughts that enter my head without me being able to avoid it.
19. My thoughts are uncontrollable.
20. I am not usually overwhelmed by unpleasant thoughts.
21. I am unable to free myself from certain thoughts: e.g. “I am a failure”, “I am useless”, “I am no good at all”, etc.
22. I think other people have more control over their thoughts than I do.
23. If I get angry or fight with someone, I can’t stop thinking about it, and I can hardly work or concentrate.
24. I get rid of uncomfortable thoughts or images almost effortlessly.
25. I have much patience, and I do not lose my composure easily.

References

陆凤英. 自我相关的负性记忆主动抑制的认知神经机制[D].西南大学,2018.
贾惠. 主动遗忘对负性情绪的影响及机制研究[D].西南大学,2022.DOI:10.27684/d.cnki.gxndx.2022.003100.
徐春晓. 社会排斥对攻击行为的影响：一个有调节的中介模型[D].福建师范大学,2021.DOI:10.27019/d.cnki.gfjsu.2021.000540.