Brooding Rumination and Internalizing Symptoms in Childhood: Investigating Symptom Specificity in a Multi-Wave Prospective Study.

Specificity of brooding rumination as a cognitive vulnerability for anxiety and depression was examined using the tripartite theory as a framework. The three factors of the tripartite theory (negative affect, positive affect, and physiological hyperarousal) were included in the same structural equation model (latent growth curves) to test three competing hypotheses: brooding rumination as a depression-specific vulnerability (i.e., brooding uniquely predicts shared negative affect + specific positive affect), anxiety-specific vulnerability (i.e., brooding predicts shared negative affect + specific physiological hyperarousal), or shared risk vulnerability (i.e., brooding predicts negative affect, the shared tripartite component common to both anxiety and depression). Data from children in 2nd through 7th grades ( = 303) were collected in three waves over two years. Results revealed brooding to be uniquely associated with initial levels of negative affect and physiological hyperarousal, thus providing support for the anxiety-specific vulnerability. Results from the multigroup analysis confirmed that the relationship among these variables did not differ across sex. Longitudinal associations between brooding and the tripartite factors are also discussed.