Cross-cultural validation of the Spanish version of the mini cambridge-exeter repetitive thought scale (Mini-CERTS) in two Spanish-speaking populations.

The Mini Cambridge-Exeter Repetitive Thoughts Scale (Mini-CERTS) captures constructive and unconstructive aspects of repetitive thinking, but there is a need to revise and improve it given its novelty. For this reason, we present a validation and factor analysis of the Spanish version of the Mini-CERTS. Given that it is important to take cultural issues into account in instrument adaptation, we also assess its measurement invariance across Spanish (N = 430) and Peruvian (N = 394) populations. After deleting conflictive items, a 9-items version of the Mini-CERTS showed a two-factor model distinguishing constructive and unconstructive repetitive thinking, although this solution was not invariant across groups. Results also showed that the unconstructive factor was positively associated with anxiety, depression and stress measures. Despite its acceptable internal consistency, the absence of measurement invariance across groups does not recommend its use in cross-group comparisons in these populations. Cultural issues that could explain this result are discussed. Our findings highlight the importance of performing cross-cultural adaptations of assessment instruments even with the same language.

The role of consciousness in threat extinction learning.

Extinction learning is regarded as a core mechanism underlying exposure therapy. The extent to which learned threats can be extinguished without conscious awareness is a controversial and on-going debate. We investigated whether implicit vs. explicit exposure to a threatened stimulus can modulate defence responses measured using pupillometry. Healthy participants underwent a threat conditioning paradigm in which one of the conditioned stimuli (CS) was perceptually suppressed using continuous flash suppression (CFS). Participants' pupillary responses, CS pleasantness ratings, and trial-by-trial awareness of the CS were recorded. During Extinction, participants' pupils dilated more in the trials in which they were unaware of the CS than in those in which they were aware of it (Cohen's d = 0.57). After reinstatement, the percentage of fear recovery was greater for the CFS-suppressed CS than the CS with full awareness. The current study suggests that the modulation of fear responses by extinction with reduced visual awareness is weaker compared to extinction with full perceptual awareness.

The Stories We Tell Influence the Support We Receive: Examining the Reception of Support-Seeking Messages on Reddit.

Although social support facilitates coping and recovering from stressful life events, people do not always get the support that they need. Prior research suggests that the way one talks about stressful events to others may influence the support they receive. Given that people are increasingly relying on online communities for social support, this study adopted a person-centered approach (latent profile analysis) to examine how narrative variables related to the motivational themes, emotional content, and organizational structure of randomly sampled support-seeking messages (N = 495) posted on Reddit (r/Anxiety and r/Depression) influenced the quantity (number of comments and post score) and quality (type of support in comments) of support that they received. We identified five distinct narrative profiles of support-seeking posts, which in turn differentially predicted the quality, but not quantity, of social support people received. While commenters provided high levels of emotional support to all forms of posts, we found that coherence was an important determinant of esteem support. A combination of coherence, as well as agency and affective tone, were important determinants of instrumental, informational, and network support. The ways in which one talks about their problems influence the way others support them.

The Impact of Interpretation Biases on Psychological Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic: a Prospective Study.

BACKGROUND: This study investigates the longitudinal role of interpretation biases in the development and maintenance of health anxiety during the pandemic. Individual differences in behavioural responses to the virus outbreak and decision-making were also examined. METHODS: Two hundred seventy-nine individuals from a pre-pandemic study of interpretation bias and health anxiety completed an online survey during the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Hong Kong. Participants' health anxiety, interpretation biases, and COVID-specific behaviours (i.e. practice of social distancing, adherence to preventive measures, information seeking), and health decision-making were assessed. RESULTS: Pre-pandemic tendencies to interpret ambiguous physical sensations as signals for illness did not predict health anxiety during the pandemic, b = -0.020, SE = 0.024, t = -0.843, p = .400, 99% CI [-0.082, 0.042], but were associated with a preference for risky treatment option for COVID-19, b = 0.026, SE = 0.010, Wald = 2.614, p = .009, OR = 1.026, 99% CI [1.001, 1.054]. Interpretation biases and health anxiety symptoms during the pandemic were associated with each other and were both found to be significant predictors of practice of social distancing, adherence to preventive measures, and information seeking behaviour. CONCLUSIONS: This study adds to the growing evidence of the role of interpretation biases in health anxiety and the way that people respond to the ongoing pandemic.

Autobiographical memory and psychopathology: Is memory specificity as important as we make it seem?

Several decades of research have established reduced autobiographical memory specificity, or overgeneral memory, as an important cognitive factor associated with the risk for and maintenance of a range of psychiatric diagnoses. In measuring this construct, experimenters code autobiographical memories for the presence or absence of a single temporal detail that indicates that the remembered event took place on a single, specific, day (Last Thursday when I rode bikes with my son), or multiple days (When I rode bikes with my son). Studies indicate that the specificity of memories and the amount of other episodic detail that they include (e.g., who, what, and where) are related and may rely on the same neural processes to elicit their retrieval. However, specificity and detailedness are nonetheless separable constructs: imperfectly correlated and differentially associated with current and future depressive symptoms and other associated intrapersonal (e.g., rumination) and interpersonal (e.g., social support) outcomes. The ways in which the details of our memories align with narrative themes (i.e., agency, communion, identity) and the coherence with which these details are presented, are also emerging as important factors associated with psychopathology. The temporal specificity of autobiographical memories may be important, but other memory constructs warrant further attention in research and theory, especially given the associations, and dependencies, between each of these constructs. Researchers in this area must consider carefully whether their research questions necessitate a focus on autobiographical memory specificity or whether a more inclusive analysis of other autobiographical memory features is necessary and more fruitful. This article is categorized under: Psychology > Memory.

Reduced specificity and increased overgenerality of autobiographical memory persist as cognitive vulnerabilities in remitted major depression: A meta-analysis.

Difficulty in accessing specific memories, referred to as reduced memory specificity or overgeneral memory (OGM), has been established as a marker of clinical depression. However, it is not clear if this deficit persists following the remission of depressive episodes. The current study involved a systematic review and meta-analysis of empirical studies with the aim of establishing whether remitted depression was associated with retrieving fewer specific and more overgeneral autobiographical memories. Seventeen studies were identified as eligible. The results indicated that people with remitted depression recalled fewer specific memories (k = 15; g = -0.314, 95% CI [-0.543; -0.085], z = -2.69, p = .007) and more categoric memories (k = 9; g = 0.254, 95% CI [0.007; 0.501], z = 2.02, p = .043) compared to people who had never been depressed. Given these deficits have elsewhere been shown to be prognostic of future depressive symptoms, these findings suggest that reduced memory specificity/overgeneral memory persists following remission and may be a risk factor for future episodes of depression in those that are in remission. The findings are discussed in terms of how this knowledge might influence clinical understanding of relapse prevention and maintenance of remission in those with a history of depression.

Suicide behaviours in incarcerated males: Links to psychopathic traits, forms of aggression to others, personal characteristics, and current penitentiary variables.

Self-injurious behaviours and suicide attempts among incarcerated people are higher when compared with the general population. The current research is designed to examine the prevalence of self-injurious behaviours and suicide attempts among incarcerated males in Spain, and the factors associated with these behaviours. 201 men imprisoned in Spain completed anonymous self-report measures of demographic variables (e.g., age, marital status), the Triarchic Psychopathy Model (boldness, meanness, and disinhibition) and impulsive/premeditated aggression and aggressive behaviour (including physical, verbal, hostility, and anger). Official records were also consulted for information related to criminality (i.e., prior imprisonment and type of offence). Overall, 37.5% of residents reported having injured themselves at a time of anger or despair and 24.9% reported attempting suicide at any point in their lives. Lower scores in meanness, higher scores on impulsive aggression, serious illnesses and previous imprisonment were associated with an increased risk of self-injurious and/or suicide attempting behaviours. Being married acted as a protective factor of attempting suicide. Trait variables related to psychopathy (lower meanness) and aggression (higher impulsive aggression) were associated with increased frequency of suicide attempts in prisoners even after controlling for personal and criminal variables. The prevention of high rates of suicide in prisons needs the treatment of those cognitive variables in addition to more contextual personal and criminal variables.

The Role of Transdiagnostic Variables Within Gender Differences in Adolescents' Self Reports of Suicidal Ideation and Suicide Attempts.

BACKGROUND: The incidence of suicide attempts peaks during adolescence, with adolescent girls having a higher rate of attempts than boys. Depression is one of the main risk factors of suicidal behaviour and yet not all adolescents with suicidal ideation or attempting suicide have a diagnosable depressive disorder. The present study examined the unique contributions to suicidal ideation and attempting suicide of cognitive processes known to be associated with depression and anxiety, but which are also transdiagnostic: anomalous perception of reality, intolerance of uncertainty, and rumination. METHOD: 605 adolescents (M= 13.22, SD= 1.03, 47% girls) were evaluated in a cross-sectional study. RESULTS: Multiple linear regression showed that the anomalous perception of reality and intolerance of uncertainty were uniquely associated with the severity of suicidal ideation, even when accounting for symptoms of depression and anxiety, but only amongst girls. In a logistic regression, self-reported depression symptoms, and not underlying cognitive processes, predicted the likelihood of a person having attempted suicide versus not having done so. CONCLUSIONS: In adolescent girls, less frequently evaluated transdiagnostic variables may have an important impact on suicidal ideation. However, depression symptoms, and not these transdiagnostic variables, seem to be the greatest contributor to attempting suicide.

The effects of efficacy framing in news information and health anxiety on coronavirus-disease-2019-related cognitive outcomes and interpretation bias.

Within the coronavirus-disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, disease-related information is omnipresent in the media, whereas information about how to manage the pandemic is less often covered. Under the context where threat is present, this study investigated whether and how the strength of efficacy framing (i.e., the perspective adopted by a communicating text that emphasizes one's possibilities to cope with an external threat) of COVID-19-related news, as well as its interaction with trait health anxiety under the COVID-19 context, related to people's COVID-19-related cognitive outcomes. One hundred and ninety-three participants reported demographics, trait health anxiety, and COVID-19-related behaviors (e.g., precautionary measures, information-seeking behaviors). They then either read high-efficacy (n = 112; e.g., cure rate) or low-efficacy (n = 81; e.g., mortality rate) information about COVID-19. Afterward, their tendency to interpret illness- and COVID-19-related information more negatively, and other COVID-19-related cognitions (e.g., risk perception, behavioral change intentions) were assessed. High-efficacy framing resulted in lower-risk perception and marginally weaker COVID-19-related interpretation bias, compared with low-efficacy framing. There was some evidence of an interaction with health anxiety such that high-efficacy framing, compared with low-efficacy framing, was associated with greater intention to adopt protective behaviors, particularly for individuals with higher levels of health anxiety. Media framing of COVID-19 information affects how people respond to the pandemic; a high-efficacy communication style might more effectively encourage healthy behaviors than a low-efficacy narrative, particularly for people who are already anxious about their health. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Indicators of Criminal Justification or Repentance in a Qualitative Analysis of Inmates Autobiographical Criminal Self-Narratives.

This study explores the narrative contents obtained from the description of autobiographical memories reported by a sample of incarcerated males that exemplified their most aggressive, transgressive, or criminal selves. Participants were 110 men serving a prison sentence for different types of crimes. Three main phenomena were identified from their stories: the narration of the criminal self, description of the crime (or crimes) committed, and the criminal responsibility attributional processes. The results showed the existence of mechanisms to justify the crime among a large section of participants, whereas the assumption of personal responsibility for the commission of the crime and the consideration of an unfair or excessive sentence were not as frequent. Also, some specific crimes concurred with concrete responsibility attributional processes, especially with the justification of criminal behavior. These findings generate useful information regarding recidivism, resocialization, and the attribution of responsibility among inmates.

The effects of attentional and interpretation biases on later pain outcomes among younger and older adults: A prospective study.

BACKGROUND: Studies examining the effect of biased cognitions on later pain outcomes have primarily focused on attentional biases, leaving the role of interpretation biases largely unexplored. Also, few studies have examined pain-related cognitive biases in elderly persons. The current study aims to fill these research gaps. METHODS: Younger and older adults with and without chronic pain (N = 126) completed an interpretation bias task and a free-viewing task of injury and neutral scenes at baseline. Participants' pain intensity and disability were assessed at baseline and at a 6-month follow-up. A machine-learning data-driven approach to analysing eye movement data was adopted. RESULTS: Eye movement analyses revealed two common attentional pattern subgroups for scene-viewing: an "explorative" group and a "focused" group. At baseline, participants with chronic pain endorsed more injury-/illness-related interpretations compared to pain-free controls, but they did not differ in eye movements on scene images. Older adults interpreted illness-related scenarios more negatively compared to younger adults, but there was also no difference in eye movements between age groups. Moreover, negative interpretation biases were associated with baseline but not follow-up pain disability, whereas a focused gaze tendency for injury scenes was associated with follow-up but not baseline pain disability. Additionally, there was an indirect effect of interpretation biases on pain disability 6 months later through attentional bias for pain-related images. CONCLUSIONS: The present study provided evidence for pain status and age group differences in injury-/illness-related interpretation biases. Results also revealed distinct roles of interpretation and attentional biases in pain chronicity. SIGNIFICANCE: Adults with chronic pain endorsed more injury-/illness-related interpretations than pain-free controls. Older adults endorsed more illness interpretations than younger adults. A more negative interpretation bias indirectly predicted pain disability 6 months later through hypervigilance towards pain.

The Role of Transdiagnostic Variables Within Gender Differences in Adolescents’ Self Reports of Suicidal Ideation and Suicide Attempts / Variables Transdiagnósticas y Diferencias de Género en la Ideación yel Intento Suicida Adolescente

Background: The incidence of suicide attempts peaks during adolescence,with adolescent girls having a higher rate of attempts than boys. Depressionis one of the main risk factors of suicidal behaviour and yet not alladolescents with suicidal ideation or attempting suicide have a diagnosabledepressive disorder. The present study examined the unique contributions tosuicidal ideation and attempting suicide of cognitive processes known to beassociated with depression and anxiety, but which are also transdiagnostic:anomalous perception of reality, intolerance of uncertainty, and rumination.Method: 605 adolescents (M= 13.22, SD= 1.03, 47% girls) were evaluatedin a cross-sectional study. Results: Multiple linear regression showed thatthe anomalous perception of reality and intolerance of uncertainty wereuniquely associated with the severity of suicidal ideation, even whenaccounting for symptoms of depression and anxiety, but only amongstgirls. In a logistic regression, self-reported depression symptoms, and notunderlying cognitive processes, predicted the likelihood of a person havingattempted suicide versus not having done so. Conclusions: In adolescentgirls, less frequently evaluated transdiagnostic variables may have animportant impact on suicidal ideation. However, depression symptoms,and not these transdiagnostic variables, seem to be the greatest contributorto attempting suicide.

Antecedentes: la incidencia del intentosuicida repunta en la adolescencia, siendo la depresión uno de los principalesfactores de riesgo asociados. Esta investigación examina las contribucionesúnicas al intento e ideación suicida de variables transdiagnósticascomúnmente asociadas con la depresión y la ansiedad: percepciónanómala de la realidad, intolerancia a la incertidumbre y rumiación.Método: se llevó a cabo un estudio transversal en el que se evaluarona 605 adolescentes (M=13.22, DT= 1.03, 47% chicas). Resultados: laregresión lineal múltiple mostró que, controlando los niveles de depresióny ansiedad, la percepción anómala de la realidad y la intolerancia a laincertidumbre resultaban predictivas de la ideación suicida en chicas. Enla regresión logística, los síntomas depresivos auto informados fueron máspredictivos del intento suicida que los procesos cognitivos subyacentes.Conclusiones: en las chicas adolescentes, estas variables transdiagnósticasmenos evaluadas parecen tener un papel importante en la ideación suicida.Sin embargo, sigue siendo la depresión la variable más predictiva para elintento suicida.

Autobiographical memory impairments as a transdiagnostic feature of mental illness: A meta-analytic review of investigations into autobiographical memory specificity and overgenerality among people with psychiatric diagnoses.

Decades of research has examined the difficulty that people with psychiatric diagnoses have in recalling specific autobiographical memories of events that lasted less than a day. Instead, they seem to retrieve general events that have occurred many times or which occurred over longer periods of time, termed overgeneral memory. We present the first transdiagnostic meta-analysis of memory specificity/overgenerality and the first meta-regression of proposed causal mechanisms. A keyword search of Embase, PsycARTICLES, and PsycINFO databases yielded 74 studies that compared people with and without psychiatric diagnoses on the retrieval of specific (k = 85) or general memories (k = 56). The majority of studies included participants with Major Depressive Disorder (∼49%), Schizophrenia (∼19%), and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (∼17%) with few studies involving other groups of participants, for example, Anxiety Disorders (∼5%). Multilevel meta-analysis confirmed that people with psychiatric diagnoses typically recall fewer specific, g = -0.864, 95% CI [-1.030, -0.698], and more general, g = 712, 95% CI [0.524, 0.900], memories than diagnoses-free people. The size of these effects did not differ between diagnostic groups. There were no consistent moderators of effect size heterogeneity; effect sizes were not explained by methodological factors such as cue valence or demographic variables such as participants' age or between-group differences in process variables (e.g., rumination). Deficits in autobiographical memory retrieval may be a transdiagnostic factor, but further research in underrepresented diagnostic groups, and with novel experimental manipulations of encoding and retrieval processes, is warranted before full transdiagnosticity and the processes underlying reduced specificity/overgenerality can be established. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The longitudinal association between individual differences in recall of positive specific autobiographical memories and daily cortisol.

The present study examines the longitudinal association between cortisol (dys)regulation - mean cortisol awakening response (CAR) and area under the curve with respect to ground (AUCg) for total daily cortisol - and autobiographical memory. 135 participants (mean age at baseline = 16.1; Females = 78.5 %) provided cortisol samples (T1). Seven months later participants retrieved autobiographical memories cued by positive and negative words (T2). Four years subsequently, participants provided cortisol samples again (T3). The retrieval of more specific memories cued by positive words, but not negative words, was associated with higher AUCg four years later, independent of sex, recent life stressors and self-reported negative self-related cognitions. There were no associations between CAR and autobiographical memory. Neither AUC nor CAR at T1 predicted subsequent autobiographical memory abilities. People who retrieve more positive specific memories may be more likely to imagine and seek out positive experiences and this may be associated with higher cortisol levels.

The current state of memory Specificity Training (MeST) for emotional disorders.

Memory Specificity Training (MeST) is an intervention developed from basic science that has found clinical utility. MeST uses cued recall exercises to target the difficulty that some people with emotional disorders have in recalling personally experienced events. MeST is simple enough to be delivered alongside traditional interventions or online by artificial intelligence. Currently, research indicates MeST's effects are immediate but short-lived, and there is limited research indicating its superiority over established interventions. Future investigations must establish the dosage and specific components of MeST that are necessary for clinically significant effects. Further, it must establish the secondary processes (e.g., problem-solving) that mediate between MeST-driven improvements in memory and symptoms. Similar interventions that build upon the idea of training autobiographical memory specificity are also emerging and warrant further investigation.

Early life adversity and the specificity of autobiographical memory amongst people with schizophrenia.

BACKGROUND: People with schizophrenia diagnoses are thought to have difficulty retrieving memories of specific autobiographical events because of attempts to avoid the negative affect associated with previous adversity. We provide the first investigation of the association between early adversity (e.g., childhood abuse) and autobiographical memory problems amongst people with and without schizophrenia. METHOD: Participants with diagnoses of schizophrenia (n = 79) and participants without diagnoses (n = 41) completed the Maltreatment and Abuse Chronology of Exposure (MACE) interview schedule and a cued recall task. RESULTS: Participants exposed to greater number of, and more severe, childhood adversity retrieved fewer specific autobiographical memories. However, participants with schizophrenia retrieved fewer specific memories than control participants without diagnoses irrespective of the presence, severity or number of adversities they experienced. CONCLUSIONS: Adversity contributes towards autobiographical memory difficulty but adversity does not explain why people with schizophrenia differ from diagnoses-free people in their autobiographical memory abilities.

Large-scale remote fear conditioning: Demonstration of associations with anxiety using the FLARe smartphone app.

OBJECTIVES: We aimed to examine differences in fear conditioning between anxious and nonanxious participants in a single large sample. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We employed a remote fear conditioning task (FLARe) to collect data from participants from the Twins Early Development Study (n = 1,146; 41% anxious vs. 59% nonanxious). Differences between groups were estimated for their expectancy of an aversive outcome towards a reinforced conditional stimulus (CS+) and an unreinforced conditional stimulus (CS-) during acquisition and extinction phases. RESULTS: During acquisition, the anxious group (vs. nonanxious group) showed greater expectancy towards the CS-. During extinction, the anxious group (vs. nonanxious group) showed greater expectancy to both CSs. These comparisons yielded effect size estimates (d = 0.26-0.34) similar to those identified in previous meta-analyses. CONCLUSION: The current study demonstrates that remote fear conditioning can be used to detect differences between groups of anxious and nonanxious individuals, which appear to be consistent with previous meta-analyses including in-person studies.

Effects of increased attention allocation to threat and safety stimuli on fear extinction and its recall.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Attention plays an important role in the treatment of anxiety. Increased attention to threat has been shown to yield improved treatment outcomes in anxious patients following exposure-based therapy. This study examined whether increasing attention to learned stimuli during fear extinction, an experimental analogue for exposure-based treatments, could improve extinction learning and its maintenance. METHODS: Sixty-five healthy adults were randomized into experimental or control conditions. All completed a differential fear conditioning task. During extinction, a subtle attentional manipulation was implemented in the experimental group, designed to increase participants' attention to both threat and safety cues. Three days later, an extinction recall test was conducted using the original cues and two perceptually similar morphs. RESULTS: Fear conditioning was achieved in both behavioral and psychophysiological measures. In addition, between-group differences emerged during extinction. The experimental group exhibited increased attention to stimuli and lower fear responses in physiological measure than the control group. Similarly, during extinction recall, the experimental group exhibited lower startle responses than the control group. Last, across groups, attending to the safety cue during extinction was associated with lower self-reported risk of the two generalization morphs displayed during extinction recall. LIMITATIONS: Skin conductance response (SCR) was not measured during extinction recall. Future research should include both SCR and additional generalization morphs so as to allow for the examination of more subtle individual differences. CONCLUSIONS: Results indicate that the attentional manipulation increased attention allocation to stimuli during extinction; this, in turn, affected fear-related physiological response.

A multi-method comparison of autobiographical memory impairments amongst younger and older adults.

Objectives: Research indicates that, compared to younger adults, older adults have difficulty recalling memories of specific past events (those lasting less than 24 h) and this difficulty is associated with depression. These studies are largely confined to a single measure of specific memory recall and there are conflicting findings when alternative measures are used. This investigation provides the first comparison of memory specificity between younger and older adults using several different measures.Method: Older (n = 105) and younger (n = 88) adults completed the Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT), Autobiographical Memory Interview (AMI) and Sentence Completion for Events from the Past Test (SCEPT) and the number of specific memories was quantified for each measure. Participants also completed the Beck Depression Inventory Version II (BDI-II).Results: Compared to younger adults, older adults recalled fewer specific memories in the AMT and more specific memories in the AMI. This latter effect was particularly pronounced for memories related to childhood. There was no group difference in responses in the SCEPT. There was no evidence of an association between memory specificity and depression for any of the measures.Conclusion: Older adults have difficulty retrieving specific memories after cuing by nouns and adjectives, as in the AMT, but they have enhanced recall of specific memories after cuing by life periods, as in the AMI, and this is particularly true of memories related to childhood. Individual differences in memory specificity are not related to depression symptoms in healthy samples.

Personal, Criminal and Social Predictors of Suicide Attempts in Prison.

Previous epidemiological analyses indicate that specific demographic and criminal factors might be associated with suicide attempts during incarceration. However, there is a relative lack of research examining the role of social variables such as perceived social support. Data from 943 male inmates enrolled from three correctional facilities in Spain were collected. Participants completed self-report measures of the demographic, penitentiary and sentence-related, social support and suicide attempts variables. Approximately 1 in 11 inmates indicated that they had attempted suicide during incarceration. Inmates who were 50 years or above and who were serving longer sentences were significantly more likely to attempt suicide. Perceived social support was not associated with suicide attempts. These characteristics might be included in the development of intervention programs for incarcerated individuals.