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People high in depressive or anxious symptom severity show repetitive negative thinking, including worry and rumination. They also show various cognitive phenomena, including probability, cost, and interpretation biases. Since there is conceptual overlap between these cognitive biases and repetitive negative thinking – all involve thinking about potential threats and misfortunes – we wondered whether repetitive negative thinking could account for (mediate) these cognitive biases' associations with depressive and anxious symptom severity. In three studies, conducted in two languages and cultures, cost bias and (in two studies) interpretation bias only predicted symptom severity via worry and repetitive negative thinking; this suggests these biases are actually associated with repetitive negative thinking, rather than with symptoms. In contrast, probability bias showed direct relationships with depressive (all studies) and anxious (two studies) symptom severity, suggesting its relationships with symptoms are partly independent of repetitive negative thinking. These results show the value of studying relationships among the various cognitive features of psychopathology. Furthermore, new interventions which target cognitive biases in depression or anxiety must show that they can improve upon cognitive behavioural therapy, which is already widely available, targets both repetitive negative thinking and probability bias, and is highly effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Computerized cognitive behavioral therapy (cCBT) and cognitive bias modification for interpretation (CBM-I) both have demonstrated efficacy in alleviating social anxiety, but how they compare with each other has not been investigated. The present study tested the prediction that both interventions would reduce anxiety relative to a no-intervention comparison condition, but CBM-I would be particularly effective at modifying threat-related cognitive bias under high mental load. Method: Sixty-three primarily Caucasian adults (mean age = 22.7, SD = 5.87; 68.3% female) with high social anxiety, randomly allocated to 3 groups: CBM-I (n = 21), cCBT (n = 21), and a no-intervention control group (n = 21) provided complete data for analysis. Pre- and postintervention (4 sessions lasting 2 weeks, control participants only attended the pre-post sessions) self-report measures of anxiety, depression, attentional control, and threat-related interpretive bias were completed. In addition, interpretive bias under high versus low cognitive load was measured using the Scrambled Sentences Test. Results: Both CBM-I and cCBT groups reported significantly reduced levels of social anxiety, trait anxiety, and depression and improved attentional control, relative to the control group, with no clear superiority of either active intervention. Although both active conditions reduced negative bias on the Scrambled Sentences Test completed under mental load, CBM-I was significantly more effective at doing so. Conclusions: The results suggest that although not differing in therapeutic efficacy, CBM-I and cCBT might differ in the resilience of their effects when under mental load. (Contains 3 tables and 3 figures.)

Previous research has shown that interpretation biases can be experimentally induced and endure for 24 hours. In two experiments, we show that induced biases not only persist but survive changes in environmental context, including transferring to different rooms with different experimenters. In one experiment, training and testing materials were also presented in different sensory modalities without significantly reducing the magnitude of the induced bias. Furthermore, we found evidence of changes in emotional vulnerability, congruent with the direction of induced bias, which also persisted for 24 hours. Together with earlier results, these findings show that induced biases generalize over contexts and have persisting emotional consequences, suggesting that appropriately adapted training methods may contribute to developing therapeutic techniques within clinical settings. (Contains 4 tables.)

The internet offers considerable potential for open and distance learning in psychology. Research reveals an abundance of psychology demonstrations and experiments available online, directed both at students and potential research participants. Although expertise is being developed to overcome the technical problems associated with this medium, there has been little or no evaluation into the impact of participating in such studies on the learning experience of distance education students. This paper describes an attempt to remedy the situation. An experiment including two computer tasks and questionnaires was offered online to a group of distance education students. A follow up study was used to assess the implications of internet experiments on the learning experience of distance education students. (Contains 2 figures and 1 table.)

Traumatized individuals experiencing posttraumatic stress have difficulty retrieving specific autobiographical memories to cue words on the Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT: J. M. G. Williams & K. Broadbent. 1986). This may represent a generalized, functional avoidance of the personal past. However, such individuals also often report specific intrusive memories of their trauma in the day-to-day. This raises the possibility that memories tied to the source of the person's distress are immune to this putative avoidance process. This was investigated in bereaved individuals with complicated grief (CG) who reported intrusive, specific memories from the life of their deceased loved one, and matched bereaved controls without CG. Participants performed the AMT and two Biographical Memory Tests (BMTs). cueing memories from the life of the deceased (BMT--Deceased) and from a living significant other (BMT--Living). To negative word cues, the CG group showed reduced specificity for the AMT and BMT--Living, relative to controls, but this effect was reversed on the BMT--Deceased. These data support the proposal that memories tied to the source of an individual's distress are immune to the processes that underlie the standard reduced specificity effect. Keywords: complicated grief, autobiographical memory, overgeneral memory, bereavement, trauma

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.beth.2006.02.002 Byline: Emily A. Holmes (a), Andrew Mathews (a), Tim Dalgleish (a), Bundy Mackintosh (b) Abstract: Therapists often assume a special association between mental imagery and emotion, though empirical evidence has been lacking. Using an interpretation training paradigm, we previously found that imagery had a greater impact on anxiety than did verbal processing of the same material (Holmes & Mathews, 2005). Although the finding of a differential impact of imagery versus verbal processing of negative material was replicated, findings did not extend to benign material. Results therefore left open the question of whether there may be a special association between imagery and positive emotion. The current experiment examined positive interpretation training. Numerous scenarios were presented with initial ambiguity as to positive outcome or not, with final information then yielding consistently positive resolutions. Participants were asked to either imagine these positive events or to listen to the same descriptions while thinking about their verbal meaning. Those participants in the imagery condition reported greater increases in positive affect and rated new descriptions as being more positive than did those in the verbal condition. Results suggest that positive training can be enhanced through imagery as opposed to verbal processing. This study also provides the first test of a standardized intervention using an 'interpretive bias training' paradigm to improve positive mood. Author Affiliation: (a) MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge, UK (b) MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge, UK, and Open University, Milton Keynes, UK Article History: Received 9 August 2005; Accepted 9 February 2006 Article Note: (footnote) [star] Emily Holmes is now at the University of Oxford, Oxford, UK. Andrew Mathews is now at the University of California at Davis.

Major depression is characterised by ruminative thinking whilst worry is considered central in generalised anxiety disorder (GAD). However, not only do these two forms of repetitive negative thinking regularly co-occur in the same individual but similarities between worry and rumination are apparent. Adapting a methodology developed by Langlois et al. (Behav. Res. Therapy 38 (2000) 157-173), this study directly compared worry and rumination in a non-clinical population across a series of variables drawn from current models (appraisal, general descriptors and emotional reactions). Each of 149 female volunteers, with a wide range of age and backgrounds, identified a ruminative thought and a different worry and subsequently evaluated them using the Cognitive Intrusion Questionnaire. Significant within-subject differences were revealed on seven variables: chronicity, unpleasantness, reality of problem, future orientation, past orientation, feelings of worry and insecurity. There were no differences found between worry and rumination on appraisals and strategies, consistent with accounts that propose that worry and rumination share the same processes but involve different content (Cognitive Ther. Res. 24 (2000) 671-688). Keywords: Worry; Rumination; Appraisals; Strategies

Previous research has demonstrated that it is possible to induce biases in the interpretation of ambiguous text passages by training. Participants consistently trained to interpret emotionally ambiguous passages in either a negative or positive direction show training-congruent effects when presented with new ambiguous material. These training effects are demonstrated by participants' subsequent recognition ratings for disambiguating sentences, which represent both possible meanings of the novel ambiguous test passages. In this series of experiments, we investigated the durability of these training effects over time spans of up to 1 day and found them to be robust. The findings encourage us to believe that induced biases may serve as a useful analogue to those observed clinically. Keywords: Anxiety; Interpretation; Bias; Information processing; Training

In several recent studies, P. A. MacDonald and colleagues (e.g., P. A. MacDonald & S. Joordens, 2000) reported unusually large negative priming effects and claimed that attention to distractors, counter to expectations, served to enhance the magnitude of the effect. In 3 experiments using their novel comparative judgment task, negative priming was assessed using both a control condition based on that of P. A. MacDonald, S. Joordens, and K. N. Seergobin (1999) and one in which control probe items exactly matched those on ignored repetition trials. In MacDonald et al.'s unmatched control condition, participants were faster than on ignored repetition trials, but this difference was reduced or absent when control items were matched. This result led to the conclusion that the apparently large negative priming effect reported by MacDonald and colleagues may be an artifact arising because judgments for a subset of their control trials were relatively easier than for ignored repetition trials.