Cognitive bias in affective disorders

Question 1

What is cognition?

Answer 1

The ability to assimilate information we perceive from multiple sources (experience, perceptions and beliefs)

Latin: Cognoscere (To know)

Question 2

What are the elements of cognitive process and which are related most to anxiety and depression?

Answer 2

Attention (anxiety)
Memory (depression)
interpretation
Reasoning

Question 3

How can we conceptualise attention and memory?

Answer 3

Attention: used daily to concentrate on stimulus to improve processing

Memory:

Storing information for later use:

Short term
Long Term:
Procedural: Through routine
Declarative: Through language and experience

Question 4

What is cognitive bias and how does it relate to depression?

Answer 4

It is the selection of information that is skewed in one direction.

175 have been found.

Depressed patients may look for information that is congruent with their mood.

Question 5

What are the vulnerability factors of anxiety and depression?

Answer 5

Biological

Social: Sex, Socioeconomic and life events

Personality: Neuroticism

Cognitive bias

Question 6

What does the vulnerability threshold theory propose?

Answer 6

That a combination of factors can move you toward a threshold after which pathology begins. This is fluid.

Question 7

How might cognitive bias effect someone with anxiety?

Answer 7

There anxiety will tighten their perceptions and attention is caught by threatening stimulus, increasing the anxiety.

Normal individual may ignore some threatening info.

Question 8

What two experiments show the role of memory in depression and what concerns are there regarding the findings?

Answer 8

Lloyd and Lishman:

Recall negative memory is faster in depressed patients.

Williams and Broadbent:

Suicidal patients unable to find specific happy memories.

Problem:
Depressed patients may have more unhappy memories
Depressed patients may view ambiguous situations as negative

Question 9

What did Teasdale et al find in his studies regarding depressed patients and memories?

Answer 9

When depressed patients were in low mood they remembered more negative memories.

Not the case when in elevated mood.

Negative Mood induced patients slower to recall positive memories

Question 10

What tests have been the earliest and most robust in cognitive bias in anxiety?

Answer 10

Stroop tests:

But: Response bias and misunderstanding of test an issue

Question 11

What test shows the inability of anxious patients to ignore threatening stimulus?

Answer 11

Attentional dot-probe test.

Question 12

What did a recent study regarding ambiguous sentences and anxiety find?

Answer 12

That anxious patients attribute increased weight to negative interpretations compared to controls.

Question 13

What did the online study of ambiguous sentences show?

Answer 13

Threatening disambigous sentences were read faster in anxious patients.

Anxiety leads to perception of threatening situations
This threat bias contributes to anxious mood
the world is threatening to the anxious

Question 14

How did Beck conceptualise the schema of depression and anxiety

Answer 14

Depression: Negative triad: Self, world, future

Anxiety: Vulnerability and threat

These schemas are stored in long term memory due to early experience and distort our perceptions.

Question 15

What is Bowers network theory?

Answer 15

Events are in memory and exist via connection to nodes that colour the experience.

Question 16

What can be said regarding implicit and explicit memory in anxiety and depression in Williams study?

Answer 16

Attention bias implicit in anxiety

Negative memories biased in explicit memory recall

Question 17

What did Matthews and Mcintosh theorise about anxiety and depression?

Answer 17

naturally we have Positive evaluation system, but threat evaluation system can dominate leading to bias toward threat meaning.

You could therefore learn to adapt to a more Positive system through training via repeated completing ambiguous stories and sentences.

Hirch (2009) showed this could reduce worry persistence.

Question 18

How has CBT improved Social Anxiety Disorder and Panic Disorder?

Answer 18

SAD: lower negative bias

Panic Disorder: Reduced catastrophic misinterpretation and symptom severity.