Ernst H.W. Koster
Ghent University, Experimental-Clinical and Health Psychology, Faculty Member
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Psychology, Cognitive Science, Depression, Cognitive Control, Working Memory, and 15 morePrefrontal Cortex, Attentional Control, Heart rate variability, Cognitive training, Cognitive Therapy, Rumination, Fluid Intelligence, Metaanalysis, Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation, Interference, Working Memory Training, Quality of Life Research, Medicine and Health Sciences, Impairments, and Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex
doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00011 Brain and intersubjectivity: a Hegelian hypothesis on the self-other neurodynamics
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Basic research on emotional memory has given rise to important innovations in research on memory training in the context of psychopathology. In the special issue om memory training research is presented on (1) memory processes in... more
Basic research on emotional memory has given rise to important innovations in research on memory training in the context of psychopathology. In the special issue om memory training research is presented on (1) memory processes in psychopathology; (2) modification of emotional memories in psychotherapy; and (3) procedures to directly target memory processes. We review the key contributions of the special issue in these areas and describe the challenges for further research in this area.
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Hopelessness is a painful state that is related to depression and suicide. In spite of its importance, only unsystematic efforts have been made to specifically target hopelessness in interventions, and no comprehensive review is currently... more
Hopelessness is a painful state that is related to depression and suicide. In spite of its importance, only unsystematic efforts have been made to specifically target hopelessness in interventions, and no comprehensive review is currently available to guide future clinical studies. Hence, we first analyze the phenomenon of hopelessness, by highlighting its components (e.g., lack of positive expectations, blocked goal-directed processing, and helplessness), antecedents (e.g., inferential styles and future orientation), and contextual factors (e.g., loneliness and reduced social support). Then, we review the currently available interventions and manipulations that target these mechanisms, either directly or indirectly, and we highlight both their strengths and lacunae. Finally, we propose possible avenues to improve our clinical toolbox for breaking the vise of hopelessness.
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Psychology, Clinical Psychology, Social Sciences, Medicine, Anxiety, and 15 moreMood, Cognitive Vulnerability, Business and Management, Major Depressive Disorder, Faces, Netherlands, Depressive Disorder, Association, ANXIETY, Disorders, Medicine and Health Sciences, Attentional Bias, Behaviour Therapy, SAD, and Exogenous
The ability to organize and segment continuous input of information to extract embedded patterns of regularity in the environment is critical to understanding what is happening around us. The process through which people extract... more
The ability to organize and segment continuous input of information to extract embedded patterns of regularity in the environment is critical to understanding what is happening around us. The process through which people extract 'regularities' or probabilistic relationships between recurrent events across space and time is referred to as statistical learning (Frost, Armstrong, & Christiansen, 2019; Frost, Armstrong, Siegelman, & Christiansen, 2015; Schapiro & Turk-Browne, 2015). Though research has widely studied statistical learning of regularities within flows of neutral information (for reviews, see Frost et al., 2019; Krogh, Vlach, & Johnson, 2013; Santolin & Saffran, 2018; Siegelman, Bogaerts, & Frost, 2017), researchers have only recently started to investigate whether people can learn and extract regularities within continuous input of emotional information (Everaert, Koster, & Joormann, 2018). In a recent study (Everaert, Koster, & Joormann, 2020; osf.io/tu9ps, "Experiment 1"), we found that people are able to detect co-occurrences among positive and negative verbal stimuli without instruction to detect patterns, intention to learn, or explicit awareness. Examining factors that may modulate statistical learning, we observed that naturally occurring positive mood state was positively associated with the extraction of statistical regularities within positive words. The present study aims to replicate these initial observations and extend them by exploring the role of trait happiness in modulating statistical learning of emotional information.
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Depression is characterized by exaggerated attention to negative information and tendencies to interpret ambiguous situations as negative (e.g., Gotlib & Joormann, 2010). Importantly, these biases are interdependent. Recent studies have... more
Depression is characterized by exaggerated attention to negative information and tendencies to interpret ambiguous situations as negative (e.g., Gotlib & Joormann, 2010). Importantly, these biases are interdependent. Recent studies have shown that depressed gaze patterns predict higher tendencies to interpret information as negative (Everaert et al., in press). These impaired processes are thought to be causally related to depression vulnerability. In our study, we aimed to clarify the role of depressive attention patterns in interpretation processes, in order to develop procedures to detect and modify these cognitive impairments. The study was conducted with a subclinical sample (n = 50). Depressive symptoms were evaluated with the BDI-II (Beck et al., 1996). Participants completed two sessions in which attention and interpretation were evaluated using a scramble sentence task (SST). The SST comprised 40 scrambled sentences (e.g., "looks the future bright very dismal"). P...
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Previous studies suggest that cognitive control training (CCT) shows potential as a preventive intervention for depression. In this study, the first to examine long-term preventive effects of CCT, we examined effects on (a) task-specific... more
Previous studies suggest that cognitive control training (CCT) shows potential as a preventive intervention for depression. In this study, the first to examine long-term preventive effects of CCT, we examined effects on (a) task-specific cognitive transfer at 1-year follow-up, (b) recurrence of depression, and (c) functioning over the course of a year. Each of 92 remitted depressed patients were randomly assigned to a CCT condition or an active control condition (ACT). Effects of training were monitored using weekly assessments of emotion regulation, cognitive complaints, depressive symptoms, and resilience (brief weekly questionnaire). At 1-year follow-up, participants completed a structured clinical interview, cognitive transfer task, and questionnaires. We observed task-specific cognitive transfer ( p < .001, d = 1.23) and lower recurrence rates in the CCT condition ( p = .04; odds ratio = 0.38). However, no long-term beneficial effects of training were observed on the weekly ...
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Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Eye tracking, Depression, Cognitive Control, and 15 moreMediation, Longitudinal Research, Medicine, Business and Management, Faces, Disposition, Individuals, Rumination, Association, Components, Moderation, Disorders, Medicine and Health Sciences, Behaviour Therapy, and Emotion processing
The high incidence and relapse rates of major depressive disorder demand novel treatment options. Standard treatments (psychotherapy, medication) usually do not target cognitive control impairments, although these seem to play a crucial... more
The high incidence and relapse rates of major depressive disorder demand novel treatment options. Standard treatments (psychotherapy, medication) usually do not target cognitive control impairments, although these seem to play a crucial role in achieving stable remission. The urgent need for treatment combined with poor availability of adequate psychological interventions has instigated a shift toward internet interventions. Numerous computerized programs have been developed that can be presented online and offline. However, their uptake and adherence are oftentimes low. The aim of this study was to perform a user requirements analysis for an internet-based training targeting cognitive control. This training focuses on ameliorating cognitive control impairments, as these are still present during remission and can be a risk factor for relapse. To facilitate uptake of and adherence to this intervention, a qualitative user requirements analysis was conducted to map mandatory and desira...
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Psychology, Primary Care, Depression, Cognition, Qualitative Research, and 15 moreEmotion Regulation, Medicine, Cognitive training, Intervention, Psychological Intervention, Executive Functions, Major Depression, Cognitive Remediation, Relapse prevention, Control Management, Impairment, Medicine and Health Sciences, SECONDARY PREVENTION, Behavioral Therapy, and Cognitive dysfunction
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Psychology, Clinical Psychology, Social Sciences, Anger, Health Care, and 15 moreHealthcare workers, Gender, Network Analysis, Stress, Medicine, PTSD, Business and Management, Psychological Intervention, Disorder, Psychological Impact, Irritability, hospital workers, ptsd checklist, CoVid, and Acute Respiratory Syndrome
Recent research suggests beneficial effects of cognitive control training (CCT) on repetitive negative thinking (RNT), a key risk factor for internalizing symptomatology. However, relatively little is known regarding predictors of... more
Recent research suggests beneficial effects of cognitive control training (CCT) on repetitive negative thinking (RNT), a key risk factor for internalizing symptomatology. However, relatively little is known regarding predictors of adherence to internet-delivered CCT as well as moderators of treatment effects for this intervention. Answering these questions could improve efficiency of clinical implementation of CCT as an eHealth intervention. The current pre-registered single-arm trial set-out to address these questions using a web-based gamified CCT procedure based on the adaptive Paced Auditory Serial Addition Task. Participants (N = 382) entered the internet-based study, where we observed considerable drop-out during the assessment phase and the first training sessions. Emotional stability and resilience emerged as predictors for deciding not to commence the intervention. Drop-out throughout the course of CCT was explained by age, emotion regulation-, and personality factors. We used latent profile analysis, a probabilistic modeling approach, to identify clusters of participants (User Profiles) based on indicators of baseline cognitive- and emotional functioning, training progress, and user experience. We obtained three User Profiles, reflecting low-, moderate-, and high-risk status. Effortful control, emotion regulation, internalizing symptomatology, resilience, and emotional stability played a central role in these User Profiles. Interestingly, User Profile predicted training related cognitive gains, as well as effects of CCT on anxiety- and stress symptoms, and reappraisal. Our findings suggest that CCT is most effective for the moderate- and high-risk groups. In addition, the high-risk group would likely benefit from a more intensive training procedure or repeated administration of the training procedure over time to foster long-term retention of training related gains.
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Background. Cognitive control impairments are present during depression but often remain during remission. What is more, these residual impairments can be predictive of future depressive episodes. Enhancing cognitive control, by means of... more
Background. Cognitive control impairments are present during depression but often remain during remission. What is more, these residual impairments can be predictive of future depressive episodes. Enhancing cognitive control, by means of cognitive control training (CCT), has been shown to have a positive influence on the future depressive symptomatology in some populations. One of the tasks used for this CCT is the Paced Auditory Serial Addition Task (PASAT). However, in its current form, the training may benefit from considering feedback and motivational enhancement. Research has shown that adding gamification elements can increase motivation, for starting and continuing a task. Our aim is to involve target population within the process of co-creation to adjust cognitive training using the PASAT. This step is an essential part of adjusting this cognitive training from a basic experimental paradigm to a clinical intervention that can be widely disseminated for preventative purposes....
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Introduction. Cognitive accounts assert that emotionally biased information-processing mechanisms play a central role in the onset and maintenance of depression. Although research has yielded substantial empirical data demonstrating... more
Introduction. Cognitive accounts assert that emotionally biased information-processing mechanisms play a central role in the onset and maintenance of depression. Although research has yielded substantial empirical data demonstrating cognitive biases in depression, scientific understandings of interrelations among these biased cognitive processes remains limited in depressed samples. This study examined the interplay between attention, interpretation, and memory biases in dysphoria. It was hypothesized that different cognitive bias parameters would be correlated. To test whether cognitive biases would operate in isolation or in concert, path models including and excluding mutual relations among biases were evaluated in a theory-driven manner. Method. The sample consisted of 19 dysphoric and 37 non-dysphoric undergraduate students. Participants completed a computerized version of the scrambled sentences test while their eye movements were recorded. A subsequent incidental free recall ...
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Cognitive processes such as attention and memory are closely related to one’s emotional state: Healthy individuals pay more attention to and better remember positively valenced stimuli, whereas anxious and depressed individuals are biased... more
Cognitive processes such as attention and memory are closely related to one’s emotional state: Healthy individuals pay more attention to and better remember positively valenced stimuli, whereas anxious and depressed individuals are biased toward negatively valenced stimuli. Although such biases are well-documented, the underlying mechanisms are unclear. Here we examine how emotional associations in long-term memory guide spatial attention. In an initial encoding phase, distinct colors were consistently paired with faces depicting either happy, neutral, or angry expressions while participants performed a gender-discrimination cover task. In a subsequent test phase, two lines were presented on each trial, one tilted away from vertical (target) and the other vertical (distractor), and participants located the target’s position. Colored disks framed each line: one color was associated with happy or angry faces and the other was associated with neutral faces. Colors associated with emoti...
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Reappraisal is an emotion regulation strategy that has been linked to positive emotional and health outcomes. However, the basic cognitive mechanisms underlying the effectiveness of reappraisal remain understudied and not well understood.... more
Reappraisal is an emotion regulation strategy that has been linked to positive emotional and health outcomes. However, the basic cognitive mechanisms underlying the effectiveness of reappraisal remain understudied and not well understood. To address this limitation, the present study examined whether long-term memory processes, including emotional memory accessibility, memory bias, and overgeneral memory, are related to individual differences in reappraisal effectiveness. All participants (N = 101) completed a memory accessibility and sentence completion memory task to measure bias, specificity, and accessibility of emotional memories. Next, participants completed an emotion regulation task requesting them to either attend to or reappraise negative self-referent thoughts. The results of the linear regression models showed that memory bias, but not memory specificity or accessibility, accounted for a significant proportion of the variance in the effectiveness of reappraisal. Retrieval of more negative memories was related to lower reductions in negative mood. These findings suggest that emotional long-term memory processes, and particularly memory bias, may modulate downregulation of negative emotions when implementing reappraisal. These insights could be leveraged to guide psychological treatments using cognitive techniques that rely on successful reappraisal use.
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Important individual differences exist in how people respond to major stressors. Despite the key roles attributed to emotion regulation and cognitive control in resilience and vulnerability to stress, relatively few studies have directly... more
Important individual differences exist in how people respond to major stressors. Despite the key roles attributed to emotion regulation and cognitive control in resilience and vulnerability to stress, relatively few studies have directly investigated these relationships upon confrontation with major stressors, such as unemployment. The current pre-registered study thus set out to prospectively test mediational hypotheses, in which baseline cognitive control (indexed by performance on a cognitive task) and self-reported effortful control predict emotion regulation (follow-up 1), in turn predicting internalizing symptomatology or resilience (follow-up 2). Data of 84 people confronted with unemployment were analyzed using path models: one based on primary outcome measures (repetitive negative thinking and symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress) and one based on secondary outcome measures (positive thinking style and resilience). The results show that effortful control and cognitive...
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Studies exploring the relationship between Facebook use and well-being have yielded inconsistent findings. Investigating the underlying mechanisms seems to be of crucial importance to gain insight into the positive and negative... more
Studies exploring the relationship between Facebook use and well-being have yielded inconsistent findings. Investigating the underlying mechanisms seems to be of crucial importance to gain insight into the positive and negative consequences of Facebook use. A recent study illustrated the importance of taking into account social comparison and self-esteem, which serve as central constructs in the relationship between Facebook use and risk for affective disorders. Extending these findings will be key to increase our knowledge on possible risk and/or protective mechanisms. Therefore, we conducted a cross-sectional study (n = 469) to investigate the position of attention control and social capital in this previous reported network. Our results provide a conceptual replication of Faelens et al. (2019). In addition, the findings suggest that attentional control is not strongly connected with the problematic effects of Facebook use. Importantly, (bridging) social capital uniquely connected...
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Psychology, Emotion, Depression, Cognitive Control, Cognition, and 15 moreRegulation, Medicine, Individual Differences, Remediation, Cognitive training, Psychological Intervention, Executive Functions, Psychosocial, Functioning, Augmentation, Executive, Neurosciences, clinical depression, Pharmacology and pharmaceutical sciences, and attention control
This study explores whether the speech motor system is involved in verbal rumination, a particular kind of inner speech. The motor simulation hypothesis considers inner speech as an action, accompanied by simulated speech percepts, that... more
This study explores whether the speech motor system is involved in verbal rumination, a particular kind of inner speech. The motor simulation hypothesis considers inner speech as an action, accompanied by simulated speech percepts, that would as such involve the speech motor system. If so, we could expect verbal rumination to be disrupted by concurrent involvement of the speech apparatus. We recruited 106 healthy adults and measured their self-reported level of rumination before and after a rumination induction, as well as after five minutes of a subsequent motor task (either an articulatory suppression -silent mouthing- task or a finger tapping control task). We also evaluated to what extent ruminative thoughts were experienced with a verbal quality or in another modality (e.g., visual images, non-speech sounds). Self-reported levels of rumination showed a decrease after both motor activities (silent mouthing and finger-tapping), with only a slightly stronger decrease after the art...
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Psychology and Rumination
Eye movement tracking is a flexible tool to study information processing and has been widely applied in the study of clinical psychology. The basic concepts in the study and measurement of eye movements are described. An overview is... more
Eye movement tracking is a flexible tool to study information processing and has been widely applied in the study of clinical psychology. The basic concepts in the study and measurement of eye movements are described. An overview is provided of the different areas in clinical psychology where eye movement tracking has advanced understanding of psychopathology and its treatment. Keywords: cognitive science; information processing and cognitions; attention; cognition; eye-tracking
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BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Individuals with features of borderline personality disorder (BPD) are highly sensitive to social rejection. Working memory (WM) may play a critical role in processing emotional interpersonal information in BPD.... more
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Individuals with features of borderline personality disorder (BPD) are highly sensitive to social rejection. Working memory (WM) may play a critical role in processing emotional interpersonal information in BPD. Yet, little is known about how emotional WM operations are related to sensitivity to rejection cues and BPD features. Therefore, this study examined relationships among emotional WM operations, rejection sensitivity, and BPD features. METHODS Participants with BPD features (n = 39 with non-suicidal self-injury history; n = 47 without non-suicidal self-injury history) and healthy participants (n = 46) completed an emotional two-back task before and after a social exclusion induction (the Cyberball game). RESULTS Results showed that participants with BPD features were slower at discarding faces expressing anger and pain from WM compared to healthy individuals before the social exclusion induction. Participants with BPD features and a history of self-i...
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Remitted depressed (RMD) individuals form a risk group for developing future depressive episodes. Improving cognitive control may reduce the risk to develop novel depressive symptoms, as beneficial effects of such training were... more
Remitted depressed (RMD) individuals form a risk group for developing future depressive episodes. Improving cognitive control may reduce the risk to develop novel depressive symptoms, as beneficial effects of such training were demonstrated in RMD individuals. The current study attempted to replicate and extend these results. In this randomized controlled trial (ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03278756), 68 RMD individuals were allocated to a cognitive control training or an active control condition, each comprised of 10 homework sessions dispersed over two weeks. Primary outcome measures were depressive symptomatology and rumination. Assessment took place before and after training and at 3 and 6 month follow-up. This study showed training-related cognitive transfer and mixed effects on indicators of subjective cognitive functioning, depressive- and anxiety symptoms, as well as broader residual complaints. In addition, we failed to observe previously reported beneficial effects of CCT on indicators of emotion regulation and resilience. Given the partial replication of previously reported effects of cognitive control training in RMD, further research is needed.
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In this study normative ratings of the International Affective Picture System (IAPS, Center for the Study of Emotion and Attention [CSEA], 1995) were compared with the ratings from a Flemish sample. Eighty Flemish first-year psychology... more
In this study normative ratings of the International Affective Picture System (IAPS, Center for the Study of Emotion and Attention [CSEA], 1995) were compared with the ratings from a Flemish sample. Eighty Flemish first-year psychology students from the Ghent University (Belgium) rated valence, dominance and arousal for a stratified sample of 60 pictures that was selected from the IAPS. Reliability coefficients indicate that the self-report ratings are internally consistent. There are four findings that converge upon the thesis that the ratings from the Flemish sample are similar to the normative ratings. First, the affective ratings from our sample correlated strongly with the North American ratings: .948, .837 and .868, respectively for valence, arousal and dominance. Second, mean valence and arousal ratings did not differ significantly between the Flemish and the North American sample. Furthermore, plotting of the Flemish valence and arousal ratings results in a similar boomerang...
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Bias modification training is a broad but very different form of CBT that is heavily inspired by experimental psychopathology research. Basically this treatment targets mechanisms maintaining psych ...
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Low resilience is characterized by impairments in attention and emotion regulation mechanisms that depend on prefrontal cortical activity. The aim of this study was to test whether transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the... more
Low resilience is characterized by impairments in attention and emotion regulation mechanisms that depend on prefrontal cortical activity. The aim of this study was to test whether transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) can augment the effectiveness of a new computerized mouse-based (gaze)contingent training (MCAT) to improve attention and emotion regulation processes (improved reappraisal, reduced rumination) in individuals reporting low resilience levels. The study used a full-factorial between-subject design combining active and sham MCAT and tDCS interventions. One hundred participants reporting low resilience levels were randomly assigned to receive either a single session of: tDCS with sham MCAT treatment (tDCS group), MCAT with sham tDCS (MCAT group), a combination of tDCS and MCAT (combined group), or sham tDCS and sham MCAT (control group). Transfer to attention regulation, reappraisal success, and state rumination was evaluated using an eye-tracking disengagement task and an emotion regulation paradigm, respectively. MCAT, either alone or combined with tDCS, resulted in improved attention regulation. Furthermore, the group receiving combined MCAT and tDCS also showed some evidence of increased reappraisal ability and reduced rumination. MCAT in combination with left DLPFC neuromodulation has potential to maximize transfer to emotion regulation capacities and to promote resilience.
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Cognitive control dysfunctions are thought to contribute to the onset and maintenance of depression. However, the causes and nature of these dysfunctions remain unknown. Here, we critically review contemporary research on cognitive... more
Cognitive control dysfunctions are thought to contribute to the onset and maintenance of depression. However, the causes and nature of these dysfunctions remain unknown. Here, we critically review contemporary research on cognitive control in depression. We identify three main conceptual issues in this field: 1) uncritical use of the tripartite model; 2) reliance on descriptive explanations; and 3) lack of integration with emotional and motivational impairments. Recent advances in cognitive neuroscience offer possibilities to resolve these issues. We review this progress focusing on the ability to detect the need for control, the role of motivation, and the flexibility-stability balance. We propose that depression-related dysfunctions arise from issues in detecting when, how, and for how long to engage in goal-oriented processing. In conclusion, we argue that integrating advances in cognitive neuroscience into clinical research can help to move from a descriptive towards a more mech...
Spontaneous thoughts occur by default in the interstices between directed, task-oriented thoughts or moments of perceptual scrutiny. Their contents are overwhelmingly related to thinkers’ current goals, either directly or indirectly via... more
Spontaneous thoughts occur by default in the interstices between directed, task-oriented thoughts or moments of perceptual scrutiny. Their contents are overwhelmingly related to thinkers’ current goals, either directly or indirectly via associative networks, including past and future goals. Their evocation is accompanied by emotional responses that vary widely in type, valence, and intensity. Given these properties of thought flow, spontaneous thoughts are highly adaptive as (1) reminders of the individual’s larger agenda of goals while occupied with pursuing any one of them, (2) promotion of planning for future goal pursuits, (3) deeper understanding of past goal-related experiences, and (4) development of creative solutions to problems in goal pursuit. The same mechanisms may occasion repetitive but unproductive thoughts about the pursuit, the consequences of the failure, or the self, and strong negative emotions steering the train of thought may lead to narrowing of its focus, th...
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Depression is linked to deficits in cognitive control and a host of other cognitive impairments arise as a consequence of these deficits. Despite of their important role in depression, there are no mechanistic models of cognitive control... more
Depression is linked to deficits in cognitive control and a host of other cognitive impairments arise as a consequence of these deficits. Despite of their important role in depression, there are no mechanistic models of cognitive control deficits in depression. In this paper we propose how these deficits can emerge from the interaction between motivational and cognitive processes. We review depression-related impairments in key components of motivation along with new cognitive neuroscience models that focus on the role of motivation in the decision-making about cognitive control allocation. Based on this review we propose a unifying framework which connects motivational and cognitive impairments in depression. This framework is rooted in computational models of cognitive control and offers a mechanistic understanding of cognitive control deficits in depression.
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Past research has demonstrated that depression is associated with dysfunctional processing of emotional information. Recent studies demonstrate that a bias in the attentional processing of negative information may be an important... more
Past research has demonstrated that depression is associated with dysfunctional processing of emotional information. Recent studies demonstrate that a bias in the attentional processing of negative information may be an important cognitive vulnerability factor underlying the onset and maintenance of depression. However, to date, the nature of this attentional bias is still poorly understood and further exploration of this topic to advance current knowledge of attentional biases in depression seems imperative. This study examined attentional biases for angry facial expressions presented for 1000 ms in 20 patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) and 20 non-depressed control participants (NC) matched for age and gender using an emotional modification of the Exogenous Cueing task. Patients with MDD showed maintained attention for angry faces compared with neutral faces. In comparison with non-depressed participants they showed a stronger attentional engagement for angry faces. In contrast, the NC group directed attention away from angry faces, more rapidly disengaging their attention compared with neutral faces. This pattern of results supports the assumption that MDD is characterized by deficits in the attentional processing of negative, interpersonal information and suggests a &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;#39;protective&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;#39; bias in non-depressed individuals. Implications in relation to previous research exploring cognitive and interpersonal functioning in depression are discussed.
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We report 2 experiments investigating hypervigilance to pain signals in healthy individuals. In order to allow a detailed analysis, we decomposed attention in 3 different processes: 1) initial shifting, 2) engagement, and 3)... more
We report 2 experiments investigating hypervigilance to pain signals in healthy individuals. In order to allow a detailed analysis, we decomposed attention in 3 different processes: 1) initial shifting, 2) engagement, and 3) disengagement. We used a spatial cueing paradigm in which the location of targets is validly or invalidly predicted by spatial cues. In the first experiment, cues were differentially conditioned to create pain signals, allowing the investigation of engagement and disengagement of attention. Because this procedure does not allow an adequate isolation of the shift component, we introduced a new adaptation of the spatial cueing paradigm in the second experiment, in which targets instead of cues were differentially conditioned. We replicated previous findings, showing enhanced engagement to and retarded disengagement from pain signals compared to control signals. In addition, we demonstrated that participants were still hypervigilant to pain signals after extinction. We were not able to demonstrate speeded shifting to pain signals. Instead we found a generally faster detection of pain signals compared to control signals. We conclude that hypervilance to pain signals does not emerge as rapid initial shifting to the pain signal but rather as enhanced processing once it is detected. Theoretical and clinical implications of these findings are discussed. We investigated the fundamental processes associated with hypervigilance to pain. Our findings suggest that treatment approaches using attention techniques should not focus on preventing patients to shift their attention to the pain but rather on diminishing the threat value and learning to disengage from their pain.
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Psychology, Anxiety Disorders, Personality Assessment, Attention, Facial expression, and 15 moreMedicine, Comorbidity, Affect, Humans, Affective Disorders, Negative Affect, Female, Male, Negative Priming, Aged, Middle Aged, Adult, Personality Inventory, Psychology and Cognitive Sciences, and Medical and Health Sciences
Cognitive models of anxiety disorders and unipolar depression have postulated that selective information processing plays an important role in the development and maintenance of emotional psychopathology. Cognitive bias modification (CBM)... more
Cognitive models of anxiety disorders and unipolar depression have postulated that selective information processing plays an important role in the development and maintenance of emotional psychopathology. Cognitive bias modification (CBM) procedures have recently been developed to test this theoretical claim. The purpose of this special section is to introduce the central ideas underlying CBM and to bring together the research that exemplifies the theoretical and clinical potential of the CBM approach.