8: Schemata and Emotional Disorders

Question 1

What are schemata?

Answer 1

Cognitive frameworks for organising and storing information.

Question 2

what do schemata facilitate?

Answer 2

Faster processing of information.

Question 3

How does activation of schemata affect processing?

Answer 3

Through perception and memory.

Question 4

What do maladaptive schemata cause?

Answer 4

Biased processing so they maintain symptoms, bias retrieval style and type of memories and affect mood.

Question 5

What 3 processes show biases in schemata?

Answer 5

Negative interpretation of ambiguous situations, focus of attention on threat and catastrophising negative social situations.

Question 6

What does CBT look to change in schemata?

Answer 6

Making people consciously aware of automatic processes in order to change them.

Question 7

What were the differences between social phobic and control speech scripts?

Answer 7

Social phobic scripts were less concrete, more negatively toned and reflected more experiences of anxiety and control scrips had more steps and detail.

Question 8

What are the key anxiety schemata?

Answer 8

Attending to cues related to threat and perceiving threatening meaning of ambiguous events.

Question 9

What are the key depression schemata?

Answer 9

Noticing failures more than successes, inferring the worst from situations that could be positive and blaming the self for failures.

Question 10

What is interpretation?

Answer 10

Semantic process which involves combining different perspectives of a social situation in order to resolve ambiguity.

Question 11

What is the interpretation bias in depression?

Answer 11

Increased negative and decreased positive interpretations.

Question 12

What is the interpretation bias in social anxiety?

Answer 12

Negative interpretations about ambiguous social cues?

Question 13

What are flexible interpretations?

Answer 13

Combining different aspects of a situation simultaneously and integrating novel information as it becomes available.

Question 14

What are inflexible interpretations?

Answer 14

Difficulties in revising original interpretations when disconfirming evidence is presented.

Question 15

How did Everaert et al. study inflexible interpretations?

Answer 15

Interpersonal scenarios about social failure presented with interpretations that disconfirmed either the negative or the positive and participants had to rate the plausibility of these.

Question 16

What were the results of Everaert et al’s study?

Answer 16

Participants with more anxiety and depression symptoms showed greater inflexibility revising negative interpretations in light of positive evidence but had no difficulties disconfirming positive evidence.

Question 17

How did Segal et al. study cognitive reactivity?

Answer 17

They measured dysfunctional attitudes before and after a mood induction in formerly depressed people who had been through CBT or pharmacotherapy.

Question 18

What were the results of Segal et al’s study?

Answer 18

Pharmacotherapy group showed a significant increase in dysfunctional attitudes after the mood induction.

Question 19

What is extreme thinking?

Answer 19

The extent to which we engage with negative schemata and show rigidity and inflexibility.

Question 20

What is higher post-treatment extreme thinking associated with?

Answer 20

Higher rate of relapse, even when controlling for depression severity.

Question 21

What leaves people at such high risk of relapse?

Answer 21

Underlying schemata not actually going away, just not currently being activated.

Question 22

Give 2 examples of dysfunctional attitudes.

Answer 22

Perfectionistic standards and concern over others.

Question 23

What were the results of Beevers et al’s study?

Answer 23

Participants who showed 50% change in mood by the end of treatment showed poor change in dysfunctional attitudes and extreme thinking predicted less survival time for relapse in the follow up period.

Question 24

What were the results of Tang and de Rubis’ study?

Answer 24

Depressed participants undergoing CBT showed cognitive change more frequently in sessions that preceded large decreases in depression and more dramatic decreases meant less depression at the end and at follow up.

Question 25

What is schema theory useful for?

Answer 25

Predicting vulnerability for development of pathology and relapse.

Question 26

Give 3 maladaptive appraisals in PTSD.

Answer 26

Meaning of PTSD symptoms, perceived negative reactions from other and future vulnerability.

Question 27

What independently predicts long term PTSD symptoms above initial symptoms?

Answer 27

Negative schemata about trauma and its consequences.

Question 28

What type of appraisal has been found to be related to vulnerability for PTSD and PTSS 6 months later.

Answer 28

Fragile person in a scary world.

Question 29

What were the results of Meiser-Stedman et al’s study?

Answer 29

10-16 year olds PTSS symptom changes in the 6 months after their incident were mediated by ‘permanent and disturbing changes’ and ruminative style and worry were associated with early PTSS/D and 6 months on.

Question 30

What do the results of Meiser-Stedman et al’s study mean?

Answer 30

Children and adolescents can appraise their trauma and PTSS as being detrimental to their current and future identity.

Question 31

What is resilience in this context?

Answer 31

The ability to normalise initial symptom reactions.

Question 32

What were the results of Rawal et al’s study with students?

Answer 32

Levels of eating disorder concerns significantly correlated with rumination, beliefs about rumination, experiencial avoidance and number of ED-related sentence completions.

Question 33

What were the results of Rawal et al’s study with anorexic patients and controls?

Answer 33

Anorexic patients had higher levels of rumination, experiencial avoidance and positive beliefs about rumination and changes in ED symptom levels was linked to ED-related sentence completions.

Question 34

What is worry?

Answer 34

Excessive verbal thought about negative outcomes.

Question 35

How is the worry cycle maintained?

Answer 35

People avoid imagery of negative future events and worry through verbal thoughts instead but more worry thoughts intrude later because fears were not fully elaborated and processed.

Question 36

How did Borkovec et al. study imagery?

Answer 36

GAD and control participants were asked to use imagery or verbal thoughts of a worry or positive future event and rate the valence of this.

Question 37

What were the results of Borkovec et al’s study?

Answer 37

Fewer images were reported by GAD group in worry condition, imagery was briefer for GAD group and no differences in number of images in the positive condition.

Question 38

Why is understanding the nature of schemata important?

Answer 38

Helps to design interventions that target these thinking styles.

Question 39

How did Buff et al. study imagery?

Answer 39

Participants with GAD and controls were asked to imagine threatening and routine scripts and had to rate them on valence, arousal, anxiety and ability to imagine. fMRI was used too.

Question 40

What were the results of Buff et al’s study?

Answer 40

Disorder-related scripts rated as more arousing and anxiety-inducing by GAD group and different patterns of brain activation were found for disorder-related scripts only.

Question 41

Broadly, what did Buff et al’s fMRI results mean?

Answer 41

Different patterns of activation were found: Hyperactive responses to threatening experiences (e.g. Amygdala) and struggle to down-regulate fear response (e.g. vmPFC).