OMEGA, Vol.

66(1) 79-88, 2012-2013

GRATITUDE ORIENTATION REDUCES

DEATH ANXIETY BUT NOT POSITIVE AND
NEGATIVE AFFECT

ROSANNA W. L. LAU
SHEUNG-TAK CHENG
Hong Kong Institute of Education

ABSTRACT

This study aims at investigating whether a gratitude induction procedure can

reduce death anxiety and promote emotional well-being. Ninety Chinese
undergraduate students were randomly assigned into one of three experi-
mental conditions: gratitude, hassle, and neutral. In each condition, partici-
pants were instructed to spend 15-20 minutes to reflect on past events and
to write up to five events of the designated category. Subsequently, they
responded to measures of death anxiety and affect. Results showed that
those in the gratitude condition reported much lower death anxiety than
those in the neutral or the hassle group. However, gratitude had no effect on
positive or negative affect. The findings suggest that the effect of gratitude
may be specific to death anxiety, which does not occur in the context of the
enhancement of overall emotional well-being.

Death anxiety is a reaction to the prospect of mortality which encompasses the

thoughts or fear of dying, especially a painful death, the physical alteration due
to diseases such as cancer, and even the passage of time (Lonetto, Fleming, &
Mercer, 1979). It triggers thoughts of regret, as death puts an end to opportunities,
achievements, and goal pursuits (Pollak, 1979-1980). Whereas the psychological
consequences (e.g., depression; Thorson & Powell, 2000a) of death anxiety are

79

Ó 2012, Baywood Publishing Co., Inc.

doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.2190/OM.66.1.e
http://baywood.com
80 / LAU AND CHENG

well-known, methods that can effectively tackle death anxiety are not evident.
This study examined whether a gratitude orientation could reduce death anxiety.
Additionally, the effects of this intervention on negative affect in general, as
well as positive affect, were investigated.
Death anxiety is present since young childhood (Slaughter & Griffiths, 2007)
and tends to peak in young adulthood (Gesser, Wong, & Reker, 1988; Russac,
Gatliff, Reece, & Spottswood, 2007), with females reporting higher death anxiety
than males (Lester, Templer, & Abdel-Khalek, 2006-2007; Russac et al., 2007).
Studies proposed that women were more emotionally expressive than men and
exhibited more negative feelings in self-report measures of anxiety (Dattel &
Neimeyer, 1990; Fortner & Neimeyer, 1999). Cross-cultural research has shown
that Chinese people generally report lower death anxiety than Western popula-
tions (Lester et al., 2006-2007; Tang, Wu, & Yan, 2002). Hsu, O’Connor, and Lee
(2009) argued that because of the religious or cultural belief of reincarnation,
Chinese people may treat death as a transition and a natural process in life.
However, Hui, Bond, and Ng (2007) found that belief in fate, another cultural
belief of the Chinese, was positively related to death anxiety in Chinese college
students. Hence, it is not entirely clear why Chinese persons tend to report
lower death anxiety than Westerners. Despite a relatively lower level of death
anxiety, death anxiety has been found to correlate negatively with self-efficacy
and positively with external health control orientation (Tang et al., 2002), in a
pattern similar to findings in Western samples (Davis, Bremer, Anderson, &
Tramill, 1983; Hyams, Domino, & Spencer, 1982; Patton & Freitag, 1977).
A major theoretical framework for death anxiety is the Comprehensive
Model of Death Anxiety (Tomer & Eliason, 1996). Building on the literature,
this model postulates that death anxiety is determined by past-related regret,
future-related regret, and meaningfulness of death to the person. Past and future
related regret refers to the perceived inability to fulfill major life goals in the
past and in the future respectively. When this happens, the realization of
self-finitude and the feelings of remorse would contribute to increased death
anxiety. In addition, the perception of death as meaningless and bad, versus
death as meaningful and positive, should affect death anxiety. Although the
model is heuristically appealing, it has not been subjected to thorough
empirical testing. To the best of our knowledge, only one study has directly
tested the model. In a sample of U.S. undergraduates, Tomer and Eliason
(2005) found that death anxiety was independently associated with past and
future regret, but was unrelated to intrinsic religiosity (a proxy measure for
meaningfulness of death).
Methods to reduce death anxiety are beneficial, and several approaches have
been developed. Based on the Comprehensive Model of Death Anxiety,
regret therapy attempts to resolve the sense of regret associated with previous
losses and mistakes, so as to engender hope and personal meaning (Mannarino,
Eliason, & Rubin, 2008). Similar to regret therapy, life review therapy focuses
 GRATITUDE AND DEATH ANXIETY / 81

on conflicts and concerns in the past, and aims at reviewing and revising
such experiences so as to gain an acceptance of the past through reintegrating
good and bad memories into a meaningful autobiography (Thorson & Powell,
2000b). In spiritual counseling, the therapist uses religious and spiritual
beliefs to reconceptualize the meaning of death, such as by seeing it in the
context of God’s will and life after death (Eliason, 2000). To address the reduc-
tion of death anxiety, other scholars and clinicians have used behavioral
approaches, including relaxation and systematic desensitization (e.g., Rasmussen,
Templer, Kenkel, & Cannon, 1998; Testa, 1981; White, Gilner, Handal, &
Napoli, 1983-84).
Unfortunately, experimental studies on the effectiveness of these approaches
in reducing death anxiety are either lacking (in the case of regret therapy and
spiritual counseling) or few and dated. On the whole, the existing approaches
to treating death anxiety have received mixed support. For instance, although
White et al. (1983-84) found that both systematic desensitization and relaxation
training reduced death anxiety in student nurses over a no-treatment group,
Rasmussen et al. (1998) did not find a treatment that combined relaxation and
stress management to be more effective when compared with an attention-placebo
control in student nurses. Likewise, in another sample of nurses, Testa (1981)
did not find systematic desensitization and implosive therapy to yield effects
different from attention-placebo and no-treatment control. To the best of our
knowledge, only one randomized controlled trial has been conducted on the
effects of life review on death anxiety. Vaughan and Kinnier (1996) randomized
HIV seropositive adults into a life review group, a traditional support group, and
a waitlist control group. No significant treatment effect was found. This finding
was surprising given the negative relationship between life review/reminiscence
and death anxiety (Thorson & Powell, 2000b).

GRATITUDE AND DEATH ANXIETY

In this study, we propose a new approach to tackle death anxiety. Instead of
focusing on the anxiety itself, or on past- and future-related regrets, we suggest
that it is possible to reduce death anxiety by simply focusing on positive
events, in particular those events for which one feels undeserving and thankful.
In U.S. college students and recent graduates, positive emotions (including grate-
fulness) have been found to completely mediate between psychological resilience
prior to 9-11 and depressive symptoms and increase in psychological resources
(life satisfaction, optimism, and tranquility) post 9-11 (Fredrickson, Tugade,
Waugh, & Larkin, 2003), an event that would normally trigger thoughts about
death and vulnerability. Gratitude can enhance the sense of a life well-lived
(Emmons & Shelton, 2002), which has been consistently found to be nega-
tively associated with death anxiety (Fortner & Neimeyer, 1999). Hence, people
who are grateful may be able to deal with issues of death and mortality more
82 / LAU AND CHENG

effectively. From the point of view of life regrets being the major determinant of
death anxiety (Tomer & Eliason, 1996, 2005), it can be argued that the awareness
of the many thankful events in life should reduce feelings of regret, and hence
death anxiety.
Our study was guided by research showing that a sense of gratitude can be
changed with simple procedures, resulting in better psychological well-being
(Emmons & McCullough, 2003; Froh, Sefick, & Emmons, 2008). A series of
influential studies was conducted by Emmons and McCullough (2003). In one
of the studies, undergraduate students were randomly assigned into three experi-
mental conditions (gratitude, hassle, and neutral) during classes. For 10 weeks,
students completed a diary at the end of each week and provided ratings on life
satisfaction, near-term optimism, physical symptoms, reactions to help received,
and the like. Those in the gratitude condition wrote five grateful events in the
past week. Those in the hassle condition wrote five hassles and those in the
neutral condition wrote any five events that had a personal impact in the past
week. Results showed that those in gratitude condition considered their lives as
more gratifying, had more positive expectations for the coming week, responded
with more positive emotions to aid from others, and reported fewer physical
symptoms than those in the other two conditions, whereas the hassle and the
neutral groups were generally comparable on the outcome measures. Another
study reported in Emmons and McCullough (2003) randomized people with
neuromuscular diseases (aged 22-77 years) into gratitude and neutral condi-
tions, who wrote diaries on a daily basis for 21 days. Results showed that the
gratitude group reported more daily gratefulness, more positive affect, higher
life satisfaction, and more hours of sleep at night than the neutral group. Longi-
tudinal surveys also showed that gratitude was associated with lower depres-
sion and perceived stress over time (Wood, Joseph, & Maltby, 2008). Despite
these encouraging results, studies that examine the effect of gratitude on death
anxiety, are missing.
In the following, we report on an experimental study aimed at testing whether
directing people to think of thankful events in life would reduce death anxiety
and increase emotional well-being, as compared with procedures that direct
people to think of hassles or neutral events.

METHOD

Participants
Ninety Chinese younger adults (58 females and 32 males) aged 18-24
(M = 21.05, SD = 1.35) participated in the study on a voluntary basis and were
recruited on a convenience basis from five universities in Hong Kong. The
study was approved by the Ethics Subcommittee of the Research Committee
of the City University of Hong Kong.
 GRATITUDE AND DEATH ANXIETY / 83

Measures
Death Anxiety

Death anxiety was measured by the Death Anxiety Scale-extended which has
51 items (Templer, Awadalla, Al-Fayez, Frazee, Bassman, Connelly, et al., 2006).
Because the scale, rated on a yes/no basis, is unlikely to be responsive to change,
we adopted McMordie and Kumar’s (1984) modification so that the items were
rated on a 7-point scale (1 = very strongly disagree, 7 = very strongly agree).
Although the scale is intended to measure multiple dimensions of death anxiety
(e.g., thoughts of death, image of death, death proximity), we used the total score,
with a higher score indicating higher death anxiety (a = .90).

Positive and Negative Affect

Positive (PA) and negative affect (NA) were each measured by six items on the
Chinese Affect Scale (Cheng, 2004). The items were developed based on the
frequency with which they were being named as typical emotional experiences
by Chinese college students and adults in Hong Kong. The measure of PA
was found to be correlated with self-esteem, optimism, positive self-appraisal,
and extraversion, whereas NA correlated with stress, pessimism, negative self-
appraisal, and neuroticism. In this study, the items (e.g., joyful and excited for
PA, and bitter and disappointed for NA) were rated from 1 (rarely) to 5 (often)
against the past month. A higher score of PA indicates that more positive emotions
were being experienced in the past month, and likewise for NA. The alpha
coefficients were .89 and .86 for PA and NA respectively.

Procedure
After providing informed consent to participate, participants were randomly
assigned into one of three experimental conditions (gratitude, hassle, and neutral),
each with 30 individuals. Participants then worked individually in a laboratory
and were instructed to write up to five past events in a 15-20 minute period.
Participants in the gratitude condition were asked to recall and write about events
for which they feel “grateful, thankful, or appreciative,” those in the hassle group
wrote events that were annoying, and those in the neutral group wrote about
important events in life. Subsequently, they responded to measures of death
anxiety, PA, and NA.
Events were coded by two independent raters as gratitude, hassle, pleasant
but not gratitude, unpleasant but not hassle, and neutral (none of the above) events
(k = .99). All events in the gratitude and the hassle condition were in the intended
category. Events in the neutral condition were 29.7% pleasant (but not thankful),
12.0% unpleasant (but not annoying), and 58.2% neutral. None of the events in
the neutral group described a gratitude or hassle situation. Thus, the manipulation
was successful in directing participants’ attention to these events in life.
84 / LAU AND CHENG

RESULTS
The data were analyzed with factorial analyses of variance, conducted separ-
ately for death anxiety, PA, and NA as dependent variables. Between-subjects
factors included the experimental condition (three levels) and gender (two
levels). Gender was also included because the literature shows consistently
higher death anxiety in young females than in young males, but no interaction
effect was hypothesized for gender and the experimental condition.
Results showed a large main effect on death anxiety for the experimental
condition (F(2, 86) = 10.17, p < .001, hp2 = .19); however, no gender effect was
found (F(1, 86) = 0.48, ns). Post-hoc comparisons with the Bonferroni correc-
tion showed that the gratitude groups (M = 3.20, SE = 0.11) had significantly
lower death anxiety than the hassle (M = 3.91, SE = 0.12; d = 1.15) and the neutral
groups (M = 3.54, SE = 0.11; d = 0.59), whereas the hassle group had significantly
higher death anxiety than the neutral group (d = 0.61).
A main effect on PA by the experimental condition (F(2, 86) = 3.68, p < .05,
hp2 = .08) was also found, but not a gender effect (F(1, 86) = 0.30, ns). Post-hoc
comparisons with the Bonferroni correction showed that the gratitude group
(M = 3.04, SE = 0.15) experienced more PA than the hassle group (M = 2.47,
SE = 0.16; d = 0.66) but the difference with the neutral group (M = 2.64, SE = 0.15)
was not statistically significant. There was also no significant difference between
the hassle and the neutral condition.
As for NA, there was no main effect for the experimental condition (F(2, 86) =
1.05, ns), but a gender effect (F(1, 86) = 14.6, p < .001, hp2 = .14) was found.
The women (M = 1.77, SE = 0.10) reported less NA than the men (M = 2.41,
SE = 0.13; d = -0.82) in this sample.
Figure 1 displays the effects of the experimental condition on the outcome
variables, controlling for gender.
DISCUSSION
This study shows that by orienting people’s attention toward grateful events
in life, their anxiety toward death can be significantly lowered; the effect size was
large despite this brief induction procedure. Given the lack of experimental
evidence on effective ways to reduce death anxiety, this finding is significant
and offers new insights into the development of treatment approaches for death
anxiety. As we have argued, reviewing the grateful events in life gives people a
chance to reconsider the benefits they had received from family and friends,
as well as positive outcomes in life that were beyond what one could hope for.
These thoughts would enhance their feelings of being loved and cared for, and
help them realize their self-worth and achievement (Neimeyer & Van Brunt,
1995). All these factors can potentially reduce past-related regrets and promote a
sense of a life that is well-lived. The feeling that life is worth living and meaningful
might have an impact on future-related regrets as well. According to Tomer and
Eliason (1996), such conditions would lead to reduced death anxiety.
 GRATITUDE AND DEATH ANXIETY / 85

Figure 1. (a) Death anxiety, (b) positive affect, and (c) negative affect
by experimental condition, controlling for gender.
Error bars denote 95% confidence intervals.

In contrast to the positive effect of gratitude, recalling hassles raised death

anxiety, compared to controls. This finding suggests that although the successful
resolution of past- and future-related regrets may reduce death anxiety after all
(Tomer & Eliason, 1996), the process of working toward the resolution may
nonetheless lead to heightened death anxiety initially because of the focus on
major negative events that result in lost opportunities. Thus, the success of regret
therapy hinges on whether the patient completes the treatment with a positive
response, or else the patient may end up having more regret-related memories
and emotions and consequently more death anxiety.
That death anxiety may be increased unintentionally by attempts to treat it
is not unfamiliar to researchers and practitioners in the field. For instance, a
meta-analysis showed death anxiety to be significantly elevated after exposure to
death education, presumably because such education raises awareness of mortality
(Maglio & Robinson, 1994). Without having to confront death issues as well as
life regrets directly, a gratitude approach that focuses on the positive avoids the
potential setback of increasing death anxiety inadvertently. Furthermore, because
the thoughts of death are discomforting, thus triggering denial (Lewis, Espe-
Pfeifer, & Blair, 1999-2000), an “indirect” approach that makes no reference to
issues of mortality has the advantage of bypassing the individual’s defense
mechanism. Furthermore, death anxiety may be aroused in counselors who
need to discuss issues of death with their clients, which may have potentially
adverse effects on the counseling process as well. A gratitude approach therefore
benefits therapists as well as their clients who need to confront death issues.
Although there was a strong effect on death anxiety, gratitude had no effect on
PA and NA. Thus, the effect of gratitude may be specific to death anxiety, but not
86 / LAU AND CHENG

a general effect on emotional well-being. Previous investigations have found

mixed results for the effects of gratitude on affect. For example, Emmons and
McCullough (2003) found that a weekly gratitude exercise did not have effect
on PA, but a daily exercise did improve PA. However, another study by Emmons’
group (Froh et al., 2008) did not find a daily gratitude exercise to be useful in
raising PA in middle school students. Similar inconsistent findings were noted for
NA. On the whole, it appears that while gratitude orients one’s attention to positive
events, it does not necessarily change affect. In the present study, participants were
instructed to write about events in the past without a specific time period, and
hence some events were in the distant past. Perhaps a mixture of past and recent
events was not enough to alter affect, as affect is mainly determined by recent
events (Suh, Diener, & Fujita, 1996). Further research is necessary to ascertain
the degree to which gratitude can impact PA and NA.
This study suffers from two limitations. First, this was not a clinical sample and
it is not clear if gratitude has a similar effect in populations with elevated scores
on death anxiety. Second, the present study included only the posttest after a
short experiment. It is important for future research to show that gratitude can
yield more long-term effects, which might require a more intensive gratitude
intervention. Despite these limitations, the present study provides a new per-
spective on ways to tackle death anxiety, and suggests that gratitude offers a
very promising direction in this regard.

REFERENCES

Cheng, S.-T. (2004). Age and subjective well-being revisited: A discrepancy perspective.
Psychology and Aging, 19, 409-415. doi: 10.1037/0882-7974.19.3.409
Dattel, A. R., & Neimeyer, R. A. (1990). Sex differences in death anxiety: Testing
the emotional expressiveness hypothesis. Death Studies, 14, 1-11. doi: 10.1080/
07481189008252341
Davis, S. F., Bremer, S. A., Anderson, B. J., & Tramill, J. L. (1983). The interrelationships
of ego strength, self-esteem, death anxiety, and gender in undergraduate college
students. Journal of General Psychology, 108, 55-59.
Eliason, G. (2000). Spirituality and counseling of the older adult. In A. Tomer (Ed.), Death
attitudes and the older adult: Theories, concepts, and applications (pp. 241-256).
New York: Brunner-Routledge.
Emmons, R. A., & McCullough, M. E. (2003). Counting blessings versus burdens: An
experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life. Journal
of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 277-389. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.84.2.377
Emmons, R. A., & Shelton, C. M. (2002). Gratitude and the science of positive psychology.
In C. R. Snyder & S. J. Lopez (Eds.), Handbook of positive psychology (pp. 459-471).
New York: Oxford University Press.
Fortner, B. V., & Neimeyer, R. A. (1999). Death anxiety in older adults: A quantitative
review. Death Studies, 23, 387-411. doi: 10.1080/074811899200920
Fredrickson, B. L., Tugade, M. M., Waugh, C. E., & Larkin, G. R. (2003). What good are
positive emotions in crises? A prospective study of resilience and emotions following the
 GRATITUDE AND DEATH ANXIETY / 87

terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11th, 2001. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 84, 365-376. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.84.2.365
Froh, J. J., Sefick, W. J., & Emmons, R. A. (2008). Counting blessings in early adolescents:
An experimental study of gratitude and subjective well-being. Journal of School
Psychology, 46, 213-233. doi: 10.1016/j.jsp.2007.03.005
Gesser, G., Wong, P. T. P., & Reker, G. T. (1988). Death attitudes across the life-span:
The development and validation of the death attitude profile (DAP). Omega: Journal
of Death and Dying, 18, 113-128.
Hsu, C-Y., O’Connor, M., & Lee, S. (2009). Understandings of death and dying for people
of Chinese origin. Death Studies, 33, 153-174. doi: 10.1080/07481180802440431
Hui, V. K., Bond, M. H., & Ng, T. S. W. (2007). General beliefs about the world as
defensive mechanisms against death anxiety. Omega: Journal of Death and Dying, 54,
199-214.
Hyams, N. B., Domino, G., & Spencer, R. (1982). Differential aspects of locus of control
and attitudes towards death. Social Behavior and Personality, 10, 177-182.
Lester, D., Templer, D. I., & Abdel-Khalek, A. (2006-2007). A cross-cultural comparison
of death anxiety: A brief note. Omega: Journal of Death and Dying, 54, 255-260.
Lewis, J. G., Espe-Pfeifer, P., & Blair, G. (1999-2000). A comparison of death anxiety
and denial in death-risk and death-exposure occupations. Omega: Journal of Death
and Dying, 40, 421-434.
Lonetto, R., Fleming, S., & Mercer, G. W. (1979). The structure of death anxiety: A
factor analytic study. Journal of Personality Assessment, 43, 388-392.
Maglio, C. J., & Robinson, S. E. (1994). The effects of death education on death anxiety:
A meta-analysis. Omega: Journal of Death and Dying, 29, 319-335.
Mannarino, M. B., Eliason, G. T., & Rubin, J. (2008). Regret therapy: Coping with
death and end of life issues. In A. Tomer, G. T. Eliason, & P. T. P. Wong (Eds.),
Existential and spiritual issues in death attitudes (pp. 317-343). Mahwah, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
McMordie, W. R., & Kumar, A. (1984). Cross-cultural research on the Templer/McMordie
Death Anxiety Scale. Psychological Reports, 54, 959-963.
Neimeyer, R. A., & Van Brunt, D. (1995). Death anxiety. In H. Wass & R. A. Neimeyer
(Eds.), Dying: Facing the facts (3rd ed., pp. 49-88). Washington, DC: Taylor & Francis.
Patton, J. F., & Freitag, C. B. (1977). Correlational study of death anxiety, general
anxiety and locus of control. Psychological Reports, 40, 51-54.
Pollak, J. M. (1979-1980). Correlates of death anxiety: A review of empirical studies.
Omega: Journal of Death and Dying, 10, 97-122.
Rasmussen, C., Templer, D., Kenkel, M. B., & Cannon, W. G. (1998). Indirect attempt
to change death attitudes: Negative findings and associated relationships. Omega:
Journal of Death and Dying, 37, 203-214.
Russac, R. J., Gatliff, C., Reece, M., & Spottswood, D. (2007). Death anxiety across
the adult years: An examination of age and gender effects. Death Studies, 31, 549-561.
doi: 10.1080/07481180701356936
Slaughter, V., & Griffiths, M. (2007). Death understanding and fear of death in young
children. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 12, 525-535. doi: 10.1177/
1359104507080980
Suh, E., Diener, E., & Fujita, F. (1996). Events and subjective well-being: Only recent
events matter. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 1091-1102.
88 / LAU AND CHENG

Tang, C. S-K., Wu, A. M. S., & Yan, E. C. W. (2002). Psychosocial correlates of death
anxiety among Chinese college students. Death Studies, 26, 591-499. doi: 10.1080/
0748118029008828 4
Templer, D. I., Awadalla, A., Al-Fayez, G., Frazee, J., Bassman, L., Connelly, H. J., et al.
(2006). Construction of a death anxiety scale-extended. Omega: Journal of Death
and Dying, 53, 209-226.
Testa, J. A. (1981). Group systematic desensitization and implosive therapy for death
anxiety. Psychological Reports, 48, 376-378.
Thorson, J. A., & Powell, F. C. (2000a). Death anxiety in younger and older adults. In A.
Tomer (Ed.), Death attitudes and the older adult: Theories, concepts, and applications
(pp. 123-136). New York: Brunner-Routledge.
Thorson, J. A., & Powell, F. C. (2000b). Developmental aspects of death anxiety
and religion. In J. A. Thorson (Ed.), Perspectives on spiritual well-being and aging
(pp. 142-158). Springfield, IL: Charles C Thomas.
Tomer, A., & Eliason, E. (1996). Toward a comprehensive model of death anxiety.
Death Studies, 20, 343-365. doi: 10.1080/07481189608252787
Tomer, A., & Eliason, G. (2005). Life regrets and death attitudes in college students.
Omega: Journal of Death and Dying, 51, 173-195.
Vaughan, S. M., & Kinnier, R. T. (1996). Psychological effects of a life review intervention
for persons with HIV disease. Journal of Counseling & Development, 75, 115-123.
White, P. D., Gilner, F. H., Handal, P. J., & Napoli, J. (1983-84). A behavioral intervention
for death anxiety in nurses. Omega: Journal of Death and Dying, 14, 33-42.
Wood, A. M., Joseph, S., & Maltby, J. (2008). Gratitude uniquely predicts satisfaction with
life: Incremental validity above the domains and facets of the five factor model.
Personality and Individual Differences, 45, 49-54. doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2008.02.019

Direct reprint requests to:

Sheung-Tak Cheng
Department of Psychological Studies
Hong Kong Institute of Education
10 Lo Ping Road
Tai Po, N.T., Hong Kong
e-mail: takcheng@ied.edu.hk