Interpretive biases for ambiguous information in body dysmorphic disorder

Anxiety-disordered patients and individuals with high trait anxiety tend to interpret ambiguous information as threatening. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether interpretive biases would also occur in body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), which is characterized by a preoccupation with imagined defects in one's appearance. We tested whether BDD participants, compared with obsessive-compulsive disorder participants and healthy controls, would choose threatening interpretations for ambiguous body-related, ambiguous social, and general scenarios. As we hypothesized, BDD participants exhibited a negative interpretive bias for body-related scenarios and for social scenarios, whereas the other groups did not. Moreover, both clinical groups exhibited a negative interpretive bias for general scenarios.     

Memory distortion in people reporting abduction by aliens

False memory creation was examined in people who reported having recovered memories of traumatic events that are unlikely to have occurred: abduction by space aliens. A variant of the Deese/Roediger-McDermott paradigm (J. Deese. 1959; H. L. Roediger III & K. B. McDermott, 1995) was used to examine false recall and false recognition in 3 groups: people reporting recovered memories of alien abduction. people who believe they were abducted by aliens but have no memories, and people who deny having been abducted by aliens. Those reporting recovered and repressed memories of alien abduction were more prone than control participants to exhibit false recall and recognition. The groups did not differ in correct recall or recognition. Hypnotic suggestibility, depressive symptoms, and schizotypic features were significant predictors of false recall and false recognition.     

Respiratory symptoms and panic in the National Comorbidity Survey: a test of Klein's suffocation false alarm theory

According to suffocation false alarm theory (Arch. Gen. Psychiatry 50 (1993) 31), respiratory symptoms are the symptoms that best distinguish the panic attacks of individuals with panic disorder (PD) from those of individuals without PD. Using National Comorbidity Survey data from those 609 respondents who had lifetime histories of panic attacks or PD, we tested this prediction. Neither respiratory symptom (smothering; dyspnea) strongly differentiated between respondents with PD and those with only panic attacks. Respiratory symptom endorsement was unrelated to PD when the number of other symptoms endorsed was controlled; furthermore, respiratory symptoms had slight effect sizes and were not included in a multivariate context. In contrast, fear of dying had the largest effect size, an association with PD that persisted after control for other symptom endorsement, and a continuing importance in multivariate analyses. Strikingly, panic attack respondents who reported having had only one panic attack were as likely as PD respondents to report respiratory symptoms during panic. These findings, although based on retrospective self-report and thus subject to recall bias, are inconsistent with the hypothesis that respiratory symptoms during panic have diagnostic significance.     

Reality monitoring in adults reporting repressed, recovered, or continuous memories of childhood sexual abuse

People who report either repressed or recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) may have deficits in reality monitoring--the process whereby one discriminates memories of percepts from memories of images. Using signal detection methods, the authors found that adults reporting either repressed or recovered memories of CSA were less able to discriminate between words they had seen from words they had imagined seeing than were adults reporting either never having forgotten their CSA or adults reporting no history of CSA. Relative deficits in the ability to discriminate percepts from images (i.e., low d') were apparent on only some tests. The groups did not differ in their criterion--response bias--for affirming having seen versus imagined stimuli.     

Emotion- and intrusion-based reasoning in Vietnam veterans with and without chronic posttraumatic stress disorder.

Patients suffering from anxiety disorders other than posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) interpret anxiety responses themselves as evidence that threat is impending: "if anxiety, then threat" (Arntz, Rauner, & van den Hout, 1995, Behaviour Research and Therapy, 33, 917-925). This "emotion-based reasoning" (ER) may render a disorder self-perpetuating. Analogous to ER, danger might also be inferred from the presence of intrusions: "intrusion-based reasoning" (IR). The aims of this study were to test whether ER and IR are involved in chronic PTSD. Vietnam combat veterans with or without PTSD or other anxiety disorders rated perceived danger of brief scenarios in which information about objective danger (danger vs safety) and response (anxiety/intrusions vs non-distressing emotion) was systematically varied. Two series were administered: ER-scenarios were non-specific for PTSD and IR-scenarios were specific for PTSD. Relative to control participants, PTSD patients engaged in both ER and IR: whereas veterans without PTSD inferred the danger of scenarios from objective stimulus information, veterans with PTSD also inferred danger from the presence of anxiety or intrusions. Further analyses showed that these effects were largely mediated by perceived uncontrollability.     

Emotional arousal and overeating in restrained eaters.

We tested the effects of 3 mood inductions (neutral, positive, and negative) on food intake in 91 women of varying degrees of dietary restraint. Mood induction was accomplished by exposure to 1 of 3 film segments: a travelogue (neutral affect), a comedy film (positive affect), and a horror film (negative affect). In subjects exposed to the neutral film, food intake decreased with increasing levels of dietary restraint. Among subjects who viewed either the comedy film or the horror film, however, food intake increased with increasing restraint. Although the horror film appeared to be more disinhibiting than the comedy film, this effect may have resulted from a difference in the intensity of the emotions induced rather than from their valence. These results suggest that emotional arousal, regardless of valence, may trigger overeating among restrained eaters.     

Cognitive bias in symptomatic and recovered agoraphobics

Symptomatic agoraphobics, recovered agoraphobics, and normal control subjects completed a series of sentence stems that had either ambiguous or unambiguous meanings, and had either a potentially threatening or a nonthreatening connotation. The written completions made by subjects to these stems were classified as indicating either a biased (i.e. threat-related) or unbiased interpretation of the meaning of the stem, and if a biased interpretation was made, whether the subject indicated efforts at adaptive coping with the perceived threat. Results indicated that symptomatic agoraphobics exhibited strong biases for interpreting information as threatening, relative to normal control subjects. Moreover, recovered agoraphobics resembled symptomatic agoraphobics more than normal control subjects, thus indicating that cognitive biases may persist following cessation of panic attacks and reductions in avoidance behavior. However, recovered agoraphobics also exhibited tendencies to cope adaptively with perceived threats whereas symptomatic agoraphobics did not.     

Content Analysis of Suicide Notes as a Test of the Motivational Component of the Existential‐Constructivist Model of Suicide

A sample of 40 suicide notes were analyzed for motivational content in relation to an existential‐constructivist theory of suicide. Results generally supported the 4 theoretical categories of somatic, relational, spiritual, and psychological motivations, with 39 notes having content that could be classified according to the aforementioned categories. Psychological motivations were found to be the most prevalent, followed by relational, spiritual, and somatic concerns. Notes of completed suicides included more relational motivations than did those of suicide attempters, and older writers of notes showed more psychological and fewer spiritual motivations than did younger writers. Recommendations are offered for revising the theory to provide a stronger meaning‐based understanding of suicidal behavior.