Dysphoria and Modes of Rumination on Emotion Regulation and Mood Congruent/Incongruent Memory
Date Issued
2012
Date
2012
Author(s)
Chang, Wan-Yu
Abstract
Research on depression has increasingly focused on the issue of emotional regulation. It has become clear that impairment in the regulation of emotions plays a significant role in the onset and maintenance of major depressive disorder. Joormann and Siemer (2004) used negative mood induction paradigm and assessed the effect of rumination on the mood-congruent/incongruent memory in dysphoric and nondysphoric individuals. Recently, research showed that compared to depressive rumination, experiential rumination could be a more adaptive emotional regulation strategy, but few studies examined how experiential rumination influenced mood-congruent/incongruent memory. In this study, the authors investigated how dysphoria and distinct modes of rumination influenced emotion regulation and mood-congruent/incongruent memory under negative mood induction. First, the authors induced negative mood on 176 subjects. After all subjects completed the negative mood induction and pre-tests, they were randomly assigned to analytic rumination or experiential rumination conditions. Finally, all subjects completed post-tests and manipulation check. The authors chose BDI cut point scores > 14 to be dysphoric group and BDI < 6 to be nondysphoric group. Using this criterion, we finally screened 95 subjects to do data analysis. A 2 (dysphoric/nondysphoric group) × 2 (analytic/experiential rumination × 2 (positive/negative cues) three way ANOVA was conducted. The results showed that under negative mood induction, nondysphoric group who ruminated analytically showed mood-incongruent recall of autobiographical memories, while the dysphoric group who ruminated analytically did not show any significant differences in recall latencies for positive and negative memories. Furthermore, compared to nondysphoric group who ruminated experientially, dysphoric group who ruminated experientially recalled significantly slowly to both positive and negative memories. Compared to nondysphoric group, dysphoric group reacted significantly slowly to recall positive memories. Compared to dysphoric group who ruminated analytically, dysphoric group who ruminated experientially showed significant slower reaction times to recall positive and negative memories. We concluded that under negative mood context, dysphoric group did not show a negative bias but instead showed a lack of positive bias. Besides, experiential rumination might have more adaptive effects on automatic information processing, indicating the adaptive effects of experiential rumination on long-term mood recovery. Taken together, the present study supported that experiential rumination was more adaptive. Given that the dysphoric group was more difficult to use experiential rumination compared to their nondysphoric counterparts, we suggest that psychotherapists should help the dysphoric patients know that it takes time and assist them to practice experiential rumination in daily life.
Subjects
depression
analytic rumination
experiential rumination
mood-congruency
mood-incongruency
memory accessibility
mindfulness-based cognitive therapy
Type
thesis
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