Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Scrupulosity, despite its considerable prevalence and morbidity, remains under-investigated. The present study develops and examines the psychometric properties of a comprehensive assessment tool, the Scrupulosity Inventory (SI). METHODS: The SI, along with other measures of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and perfectionism, were administered to a sample (N = 150) of college undergraduates similar in size to other scale development studies of related measures...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: CBT for patients with bipolar disorder has modest effects. Across disorders, mental imagery has been used to update CBT to increase effectiveness. In order to enhance CBT for bipolar disorder with imagery techniques, research is needed into emotional imagery quality and, related appraisals of imagery and their relationships with mood instability and subsequent behaviour in bipolar disorder. METHODS: Patients with bipolar disorder (n = 106), unipolar depression (n = 51), creative imagery prone participants (n = 53) and participants without a history of a mood disorder (n = 135) completed the Dutch Imagery Survey (DImS), an online imagery survey, adapted from the Imagery Interview, assessing self-reported emotional imagery aspects...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Cognitive processes such as aberrant salience and the jumping to conclusions (JTC) bias are implicated in the development of delusions. Self-referential thinking is implicated in this process; however, it is unknown how it may interact with aberrant salience and JTC bias in individuals with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders (SSDs). This study examined associations of self-referential thinking with aberrant salience, JTC bias, and delusion severity, and whether self-referential stimuli led to an increase in aberrant salience and JTC bias in SSDs (n = 20) relative to psychiatrically healthy controls (n = 20)...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have reported higher anger and aggression than healthy individuals in previous studies using explicit measures. However, studies using implicit measures have demonstrated mixed results. The aim of the present study was to investigate implicit aggressiveness in OCD using an approach-avoidance task (AAT). METHODS: Seventy-eight patients with OCD and 37 healthy controls underwent structured clinical interviews and measures of anger, OCD, and depressive symptoms as well as a computerized AAT that included aggressive, peaceful, negative, and positive stimuli...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Dual process models of addiction suggest that controlled, goal-directed processes prevent drug-use, whereas impulsive, stimulus-driven processes promote drug-use. The most frequently used measure of automatic smoking-related processes, the implicit association test (IAT), has yielded mixed results. We examine the validity of two alternative implicit measures: 1) the affect misattribution procedure (AMP), a measure of automatic evaluations, and 2) the relational responding task (RRT), a measure of implicit beliefs...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Research has consistently shown that greater social media use is associated with elevated eating disorder (ED) symptoms. Importantly, however, the investigation of this relationship has largely relied upon the use of self-report measures of social media use in the context of correlational designs. Given that correlational studies do not permit inferences regarding causation, and recent findings questioning the validity of self-report social media use, it is critical to corroborate past findings using experimental designs and objective measures...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a global health problem. Although effective treatments for it exist, early interventions that prevent PTSD from developing are lacking. The aim of this pilot analogue trauma study was to compare the effects of two potential early intervention strategies, namely Tetris_dualtask and imagery rescripting (IR) to a no-intervention control group on intrusion frequency and the vividness and emotionality of aversive film memory...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Cognitive theories of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) suggest that dysfunctional beliefs influence symptoms. However, well-established belief domains do not fully explain OCD symptomatology, suggesting other cognitive mechanisms may be involved. An additional belief domain which may play a role in OCD is beliefs about losing control. Indeed, these beliefs have been found to be associated with OCD symptoms. However, the relationships between beliefs about losing control and other OCD phenomena, including other relevant dysfunctional beliefs, is unclear...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Cognitive models of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) suggest that appraisals of traumatic sequelae and subsequent distress drive the development and maintenance of PTSD. Posttraumatic research has relied heavily on macro-longitudinal designs, with weeks or months between assessments of trauma-related cognitions and symptoms. The present study uses experience sampling methodology (ESM) better understand the day-to-day experiences of trauma exposed individuals...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Much of the burden of depressive illness is due to relapses that occur after treatment into remission. Prediction of an individual's imminent depressive relapse could lead to just-in-time interventions to prevent relapse, reducing depression's substantial burden of disability, costs, and suicide risk. Increasingly strong relationships in the form of autocorrelations between depressive symptoms, a signal of a phenomenon described as critical slowing down (CSD), have been proposed as a means of predicting relapse...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Cognitive bias theories posit that generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and social anxiety disorder (SAD) are entwined with attention bias toward threats, commonly indexed by faster response time (RT) on threat-congruent (vs. threat-incongruent) trials on the visual dot probe. Moreover, although smartphone ecological momentary assessment (EMA) of the visual dot probe has been developed, their psychometric properties are understudied. This study thus aimed to assess the reliability of 8 smartphone-delivered visual dot probe attention bias and related indices in persons with and without GAD and SAD...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Virtual reality (VR) interventions are becoming more prevalent in treating fear of flying (FoF). Since multisensory stimulation can enhance the sense of presence in a virtual environment, the present study compared virtual reality exposure with and without vibrotactile cues to determine its contribution to the realism of the virtual experience. METHODS: A repeated measures design was used. Thirty-one participants were exposed to two experimental conditions with a minimum of a one-week interval between them: one in which participants were exposed to the virtual environment with vibrotactile cues (smart chair, SC), and another in which participants were exposed to the virtual environment without vibrotactile cues (ordinary chair, OC)...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Young offenders show high levels of substance use. Treatment programs within detention settings are less effective. Cognitive bias modification (CBM) is a promising supplement to substance use treatment. This study tests the effectiveness of CBM in young offenders to reduce cannabis and alcohol use, and delinquent recidivism. METHOD: A randomized controlled trial added CBM to treatment as usual (TAU), among 181 youth in juvenile detention centers...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Research indicates the presence of both explicit and implicit memory biases for threat. However, empirical support for the presence of memory biases related to symmetry, ordering and arranging is lacking, despite the fact that many individuals report anxiety associated with their personal belongings being out of place. The aim of this experiment was to examine memory biases for disorderliness and their associations with symmetry, ordering and arranging symptoms...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Cognitive theories propose that individuals with heightened depression are characterized by biases in memory and interpretation, favoring the processing of negative information. Individuals with heightened depression exhibit a negative memory bias, and this bias is disproportionately evident when emotional information is processed in a self-referential manner. In studies investigating whether individuals with heightened depression exhibit a negative interpretative bias, the measures employed have often been compromised by serious methodological limitations...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: The burden of statistics anxiety on students calls for effective interventions. This study investigated whether a cognitive reappraisal training designed to stimulate the generation of positive re-interpretations may yield behavioral changes in anxiety measures and changes in cerebral activation patterns reflecting the activation of approach/avoidance motivational tendencies (frontal EEG alpha asymmetry response). METHODS: Three groups of female psychology students (n = 45) with statistics anxiety were tested...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Depersonalisation/derealisation symptoms are prevalent in psychosis patients, are associated with increased impairment, and may maintain psychosis symptoms. We aimed to establish the feasibility and acceptability of a brief, six session therapy protocol adapted from a Cognitive-Behavioural model of Depersonalisation-Derealisation Disorder (DDD) in participants with psychotic symptoms. METHODS: A single-blind, randomised controlled trial was conducted with a treatment-as-usual control condition...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Understanding how individuals integrate new information to form beliefs under changing emotional conditions is crucial to describing decision-making processes. Previous research suggests that although most people demonstrate bias toward optimistic appraisals of new information when updating beliefs, individuals with dysphoric psychiatric conditions (e.g., major depression) do not demonstrate this same bias. Despite these findings, limited research has investigated the relationship between affective states and belief updating processes...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Imagery-based techniques have become a promising means in the treatment of test anxiety (TA). Although previous studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of imagery-based treatment, not all clients seem to benefit from it. The present study compares clients' pre- as well as post-treatment emotion dynamics between responders and non-responders. Furthermore, it examines treatment-related changes in emotion dynamics in both subgroups. METHODS: The results are based on 44 clients suffering from TA who underwent a six-session imagery-based treatment and include Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA)...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: People with Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) evaluate themselves negatively before, during, and after anxiety-provoking social situations, which leads to negative consequences (e.g., performance deficits, memory impairments, and post-event processing). Despite decades of research, little is known regarding whether these evaluations generalize to how they view others. Social projection theory-the belief that others are similar to oneself-might further extend the basic Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) model...