Behaviour Research and Therapy

Evolutionary theorizing has given rise to the idea that responding to any particular threat may be more mandatory than responding to any particular reward. The present three experiments (total N = 375) sought to provide support for this perspective in an emotion dynamics task in which participants continuously rated their affective state in response to appetitive (reward-related) versus aversive (threat-related) images. Even when equating images for arousal and extremity, several negativity effects (e...

This study analyzed effects of savoring on unstudied positive mindset targets of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) treatment (ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT05040061). 85 students with GAD were randomly assigned to one of two ecological momentary interventions (EMIs) on smartphone for seven days. The SkillJoy EMI promoted practices for savoring positive emotions. An active control EMI mirrored SkillJoy, yet did not include savoring or positive emotion. Optimism, worry, kill-joy thinking (lessening positive emotion with cognition), and prioritization of positive emotion activities and goals were assessed at pre-trial, eighth-day, post-trial, and 30th -day follow-up...

We investigated whether informal meditation practice (i.e., self-reported application of meditative techniques outside a period of formal meditation) was associated with outcomes in smartphone-based loving-kindness and compassion training. Meditation-naïve participants (n = 351) with clinically elevated symptoms completed measures of psychological distress, loneliness, empathy, and prosociality at baseline and following a two-week intervention. Informal practice, psychological distress, and loneliness were also assessed daily...

Alcohol misuse - defined as consuming more than 14 units of alcohol per week - is a well-established problem among veterans. This study investigated the change in quality of life among help-seeking UK veterans who completed a 28-day brief alcohol intervention delivered via a digital smartphone application (called DrinksRation) and have previously sought clinical help for a mental health disorder. This study was a secondary outcome analysis of data collected during a randomised control trial. In total, 123 UK veterans participated in the study and were randomly allocated to either the intervention or control arm...

Anxiety and depressive disorders are highly prevalent and a leading cause of disability. Understanding how symptoms develop could lead to new preventive and clinical interventions. This pilot study examined whether systematically restricting specific behaviours (target actions) associated with good psychological health would increase psychological symptoms in healthy participants, and whether resuming those actions would reduce symptoms to baseline levels. Twelve adults participated in a series of N-of-1 trials comprising baseline (A), restriction (B) and recovery (C) phases...

Maladaptive emotional memories are a transdiagnostic feature of mental health problems. Therefore, understanding whether and how emotional memories can change might help to prevent and treat mental disorders. We tested whether neutral memories of naturalistic events can retroactively acquire positive or negative affect, in a preregistered three-day Modification of Valence in Episodes (MOVIE) paradigm. On Day 1, participants (N = 41) encoded memories of neutral movie scenes, representing lifelike naturalistic experiences...

OBJECTIVE: This study experimentally compared the effects of emotion regulation (ER) strategies on alcohol craving and examined the mediating effect of state difficulties in emotion regulation (S-DER) on the relationship between negative/positive emotion and alcohol craving. METHOD: 417 participants (76.74% women, Mage  = 20.76 years) endorsing past-month heavy/binge drinking were randomly assigned to one of four ER conditions (positive reappraisal, distancing, distraction, and acceptance)...

This study experimentally investigated the role of anticipated enjoyment and effort in mediating dysphoria-related deficit in activity engagement behavioural choice. Using a novel activity information processing task (about a fictional "new" Nintendo Wii sports game called "Tornado Ball"), N = 249 participants (n = 95 High Dysphoria; n = 154 Low Dysphoria) were presented information about the benefits (enjoyable features) and costs (mental and physical effort barriers) as product reviews from another player...

According to the cognitive model of suicide, interactions between hopelessness and attentional biases toward suicidal information create a narrowed attentional focus on suicide as a viable solution, particularly in the presence of life stress, leading to increased suicide risk. This study used a dynamic systems approach to examine the short-term temporal patterns between stress, hopelessness, suicide-specific rumination, and suicidal intent. Adults (N = 237; M = 27.12 years; 62% cisgender women; 87% White/European American) with elevated suicidal ideation completed ecological momentary assessments six times a day for 14 days...

Rising rates of depression on university campuses accentuate the need for specific intervention. Interventions targeting disturbances in positive affect, in particular, remain sparse, yet such deficits interfere substantially with functioning and further exacerbate or maintain negative symptoms. The current study aimed to evaluate the impact of a virtual, two-session Behavioral Activation augmented with Savoring (BA + S) intervention compared to an Emotional Awareness (EA) control group in increasing positive affect...

Individuals experiencing suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STBs) show less specificity and positivity during episodic future thinking (EFT). Here, we present findings from two studies aiming to (1) further our understanding of how STBs may relate to neural responsivity during EFT and (2) examine the feasibility of modulating EFT-related activation using real-time fMRI neurofeedback (rtfMRI-nf). Study 1 involved 30 individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD; half with STBs) who performed an EFT task during fMRI, for which they imagined personally-relevant future positive, negative, or neutral events...

OBJECTIVE: Rumination is a major risk factor for the onset and recurrence of depressive episodes and has been associated with deficits in updating working memory content. This randomized controlled trial examines whether training updating-specific cognitive control processes reduces daily ruminative thoughts in clinically depressed individuals. METHODS: Sixty-five individuals with a current major depressive episode were randomized to 10 sessions of either cognitive control training (N = 31) or placebo training (N = 34)...

Identifying effective components can lead to interventions that are less resource-intensive and better suited for real-world needs. In this 2×2×2 cluster-randomized factorial trial (clinicaltrials.gov NCT04263558), we investigated the effects of three components of an indicated, transdiagnostic CBT intervention for children: 1) Intervention Delivery Format (child group format versus a blended format with group sessions and automated web-based sessions), 2) Parental Involvement in the intervention (group-based versus psychoeducational brochure), and 3) a Measurement Feedback System (MFS; on versus off)...

Given that emotion regulation difficulties confer risk for poor responses to stress, they may predict who is at risk for adverse psychological reactions to major, chronic stressors such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Specific adverse reactions to the pandemic may include more severe traumatic stress, anxiety, and excessive safety behavior use (i.e., hand washing). While emotion regulation difficulties may be a diathesis for adverse reactions to chronic stressors, the context(s) by which they may confer elevated risk is unclear...

Previous work has shown that adults suffering from major depressive disorder (MDD) can increase their amygdala reactivity while recalling positive memories via real-time neurofeedback (rt-fMRI-nf) training, which is associated with reduction in depressive symptoms. This study investigated if this intervention could also be considered for patients suffering from MDD who do not respond to standard psychological and pharmacological interventions, i.e., treatment resistant (TR-MDD). 15 participants received 5 neurofeedback sessions...

Emotional engagement when recollecting a trauma memory is considered a key element of effective trauma-focused therapy. Research has shown that reduced physiological reactivity during trauma recall is associated with worse treatment outcomes for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but this has yet to be examined in a cognitively oriented treatment. This study examined whether pretreatment heart rate (HR) reactivity during trauma recall predicts PTSD symptom improvement and treatment dropout during Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) for PTSD...

The extended process model of emotion regulation provides a framework for understanding how emotional experiences and emotion regulation (ER) mutually influence each other over time. To investigate this reciprocal relationship, 202 adults completed a ten-day experience-sampling survey capturing levels of negative affect (NA) experience and use of ten ER strategies in daily life. Residual dynamic structural equation models (DSEMs) were used to examine within-person cross-lagged and autoregressive effects of NA and ER (strategy use and between-strategy variability)...

Contextual renewal of reward anticipation may be one potential mechanism underlying relapse in eating and substance use disorders. We therefore tested retrieval cues, a method derived from an inhibitory retrieval-based model of extinction learning to attenuate contextual renewal using an appetitive conditioning paradigm. A pilot study was carried out in Experiment 1 to validate a differential chocolate conditioning paradigm, in which a specific tray was set up as a conditioned stimulus (CS) for eating chocolate (unconditioned stimulus, US)...

Foundational cognitive models propose that people with anxiety and depression show risk estimation bias, but most literature does not compute true risk estimation bias by comparing people's subjective risk estimates to their individualized reality (i.e., person-level objective risk). In a diverse community sample (N = 319), we calculated risk estimation bias by comparing people's subjective risk estimates for contracting COVID-19 to their individualized objective risk. Person-level objective risk was consistently low and did not differ across symptom levels, suggesting that for low probability negative events, people with greater symptoms show risk estimation bias that is driven by subjective risk estimates...

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a dramatic increase in the salience and importance of information relating to both the risk of infection, and factors that could mitigate against such risk. This is likely to have contributed to elevated contamination fear concerns in the general population. Biased attention for contamination-related information has been proposed as a potential mechanism underlying contamination fear, though evidence regarding the presence of such biased attention has been inconsistent...