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Stuck In The Past? Rumination-Related Memory Integration, Paula T. Hertel, C. Wahlheim, William A. Price, Emily M. Crusius, Christina L. Patino

Psychology Faculty Research

Memories connected to ruminative concerns repetitively capture attention, even in situations designed to alter them. However, recent research on memory updating suggests that memory for benign substitutes (e.g., reinterpretations) might be facilitated by integration with the ruminative memories. As a first approach, two experiments (Ns = 72) mimicked rumination-related memories with rumination-themed stimuli and an imagery task. College undergraduates screened for ruminative status first studied and imaged ruminative cue-target word pairs, and then in a second phase they studied the same cues re-paired with benign targets (along with new and repeated pairs). On the test of cued recall of …

Inferences Training Affects Memory, Rumination, And Mood, B. Perlman, N. Mor, Y. Wisney Jacobinski, A. Doron Zakon, N. Avirbach, Paula T. Hertel

Psychology Faculty Research

Making negative inferences for negative events, ruminating about them, and retrieving negative aspects of memories have all been associated with depression. However, the causal mechanisms that link negative inferences to negative mood and the interplay between inferences, rumination, and memory have not been explored. In the current study, we used a cognitive-bias modification (CBM) procedure to train causal inferences and assessed training effects on ruminative thinking, memory, and negative mood among people with varying levels of depression. Training had immediate effects on negative mood and rumination but not after recall of a negative autobiographical memory. Note that training affected memory: …

Rumination: Practicing Retrieval Of Autobiographical Memories, Paula T. Hertel, Paola Herrera, Pallavi Shamapant

Psychology Faculty Research

Background

People who ruminate about negative personal experiences seem to be engaged in practicing retrieval, with the expected consequences of perpetuating those very memories (see Roediger and Butler in Trends Cogn Sci 15:20–27, 2011).

Method

To provide an experimental model of the effect of retrieval practice on subsequent recall of autobiographical memories, we recruited students with low and high scores on the Ruminative Response Scale (Treynor et al. in Cogn Ther Res 27:247–259, 2003), gave them positive and ruminative cues to generate memories, and cued three rounds of practice of half of the memories from each valence.

Results

A week …

Training To Inhibit Negative Content Affects Memory And Rumination, Shimrit Daches, Nilly Mor, Paula T. Hertel

Psychology Faculty Research

Depressive rumination, the tendency to engage in repetitive self-focus in response to distress, seems to be affected by a variety of cognitive biases that in turn maintain negative emotional states. The current study examined whether the difficulty in inhibiting attention to negative information contributes to rumination and to rumination-related biases in memory. Seventy-nine ruminators underwent a 3-week computer-based training, designed to increase either inhibition of negative words or attention to them. On immediate post-training trials, as well as on 2-week follow-up tests, we found evidence for transfer of inhibition training. Training effects also occurred on session-by-session and post-training measures of …

Brooding Deficits In Memory: Focusing Attention Improves Subsequent Recall, Paula T. Hertel, Amanda A. Benbow, E. Geraerts

Psychology Faculty Research

Ruminative habits of thought about one’s problems and the resulting consequences are correlated with symptoms of depression and cognitive biases (Nolen-Hoeksema, Wisco, & Lyubomirsky, 2008). In our orienting task, brooders and nonbrooders concentrated on self-focusing phrases while they were also exposed to neutral target words. On each trial in the unfocused condition, participants saw and then reported the target before concentrating on the phrase; in the focused condition, the target was reported after phrase concentration. A brooding-related deficit on a subsequent unexpected test of free and forced recall was obtained in the unfocused condition only. Brooders recalled more successfully in …

Recollection Is Impaired By The Modification Of Interpretation Bias, Paula T. Hertel, Elaina Vasquez, Amanda Benbow, Megan Hughes

Psychology Faculty Research

The interpretation paradigm of cognitive-bias modification (CBM-I) was modified with instructions used in process-dissociation procedures for the purpose of investigating processes contributing to performance on the transfer task. In Experiment 1 nonanxious students were trained to interpret ambiguous situations in either a negative or benign way (or they read nonambiguous scenarios). They were then asked to respond to new ambiguous situations in the same way as contextually similar analogues during training, or to respond differently. Benign training proactively impaired memory for negative outcomes. This effect was replicated by anxious students in Experiment 2 and discussed with respect to the assumptions …

Cognitive Bias Modification: Past Perspectives, Current Findings, And Future Applications, Paula T. Hertel, A. Mathews

Psychology Faculty Research

Research conducted within the general paradigm of Cognitive Bias Modification (CBM) reveals that emotional biases in attention, interpretation, and memory are not merely associated with emotional disorders but contribute to them. After briefly describing research on both emotional biases and their modification, we examine similarities between CBM paradigms and older experimental paradigms used in research on learning and memory. We also compare the techniques and goals of CBM research to other approaches to understanding cognition/emotion interactions. From a functional perspective, the CBM tradition reminds us to use experimental tools to evaluate assumptions about clinical phenomena and more generally, about causal …

Cognitive Bias Modification: Induced Interpretive Biases Affect Memory, T. B. Tran, Paula T. Hertel, Jutta Joormann

Psychology Faculty Research

Previous research has shown that it is possible to experimentally induce interpretive biases using ambiguous scenarios. This study extends past findings by examining the effects of manipulating interpretation on subsequent memory. Participants were trained to interpret emotionally ambiguous passages in either a positive or negative direction. Transfer of the training to novel scenarios was tested. Following training, participants were also asked to recall details from these novel scenarios. The results indicate that the training was effective in inducing the intended group differences in interpretive bias. Importantly, participants exhibited memory biases that corresponded to their training condition. These results suggest that …

Interpretation Training Influences Memory For Prior Interpretations, E. Salemink, Paula T. Hertel, B. Mackintosh

Psychology Faculty Research

Anxiety is associated with memory biases when the initial interpretation of the event is taken into account. This experiment examined whether modification of interpretive bias retroactively affects memory for prior events and their initial interpretation. Before training, participants imagined themselves in emotionally ambiguous scenarios to which they provided endings that often revealed their interpretations. Then they were trained to resolve the ambiguity in other situations in a consistently positive (n = 37) or negative way (n = 38) before they tried to recall the initial scenarios and endings. Results indicated that memory for the endings was imbued with …

Training The Forgetting Of Negative Material: The Role Of Active Suppression And The Relation To Stress Reactivity, J. Lemoult, Paula T. Hertel, Jutta Joormann

Psychology Faculty Research

In this study, the authors investigated whether training participants to use cognitive strategies can aid forgetting in depression. Participants diagnosed with major depressive disorder (MDD) and never-depressed participants learned to associate neutral cue words with a positive or negative target word and were then instructed not to think about the negative targets when shown their cues. The authors compared 3 different conditions: an unaided condition, a positive-substitute condition, and a negative-substitute condition. In the substitute conditions, participants were instructed to use new targets to keep from thinking about the original targets. After the trainingphase, participants were instructed to recall all …

Training Forgetting Of Negative Material In Depression, Jutta Joormann, Paula T. Hertel, J. Lemoult, Ian Henry Gotlib

Psychology Faculty Research

In this study, the authors investigated whether training participants to use cognitive strategies can aid forgetting in depression. Participants diagnosed with major depressive disorder (MDD) and never-depressed participants learned to associate neutral cue words with a positive or negative target word and were then instructed not to think about the negative targets when shown their cues. The authors compared 3 different conditions: an unaided condition, a positive-substitute condition, and a negative-substitute condition. In the substitute conditions, participants were instructed to use new targets to keep from thinking about the original targets. After the training phase, participants were instructed to recall …

Biases In Interpretation And Memory In Generalized Social Phobia, Paula T. Hertel, F. Brozovich, Jutta Joormann, Ian Henry Gotlib

Psychology Faculty Research

Two experiments examined the link between interpretation and memory in individuals diagnosed with Generalized Social Phobia (GSP). In Experiment 1, GSP and control participants generated continuations for nonsocial and ambiguous social scenarios. GSP participants produced more socially anxious and negative continuations for the social scenarios than did the controls. On the subsequent test of recalling the social scenarios, intrusion errors that shared meaning with the original continuations were made more frequently by the GSP group, producing false recall with emotionally negative features. To examine whether nonanxious individuals would also produce such errors if given emotional interpretations, in Experiment 2 the …

Depression-Related Differences In Learning And Forgetting Responses To Unrelated Cues, Paula T. Hertel, A. Mahan

Psychology Faculty Research

Using the think/no-think paradigm, we examined the effect of a meaningful connection between emotionally neutral cues and targets on initial learning and later recall by students in dysphoric or nondysphoric mood states. Compared to meaningfully connected cue-target pairs, unrelated pairs were less easily learned and more easily forgotten, even when initial learning was controlled. Depressive deficits were obtained in initial learning (only marginally) and final recall. When examined separately within each cuing condition, the recall deficit associated with depressed mood was restricted to the unrelated condition, but when initial learning differences were controlled this deficit was only marginally significant. Results …

Intentional Forgetting Benefits From Thought Substitution, Paula T. Hertel, G. Calcaterra

Psychology Faculty Research

This study provides both experimental and correlational evidence that forgetting in the think/no-think paradigm (Anderson & Green, 2001) is sensitive to the substitution of thoughts about new events forthoughts that are to be suppressed. All the participants learned a list of adjective-noun pairs. Then the adjectives were presented as cues for recalling half of the nouns and as cues for suppressing the other half, 0, 2, or 12 times. Aided participants were provided with substitute nouns, to use during suppression. On a final test that requested recall of all initially learned nouns, aided participants showed evidence of below-baseline forgetting of …

Emotional Episodes Facilitate Word Recall, Paula T. Hertel, C. Parks

Psychology Faculty Research

Dysphoric and nondysphoric college students described self-generated images of themselves interacting with the referents of neutral nouns; the nouns were paired with adjectives that changed their emotional meaning (e.g., cruise ship, cargo ship, sinking ship). On the subsequent unexpected test, the nouns from emotional pairings were more frequently recalled than were those from neutral pairings, regardless of their valence or congruence with the students' mood. An examination of the initial descriptions revealed that emotional images were more distinctive, but not in a pattern correlated with recall of the corresponding nouns.

The Cognitive-Initiative Account Of Depression-Related Impairments In Memory, Paula T. Hertel

Psychology Faculty Research

The many and diverse interpretations of the word control make it clear that control constitutes a fundamental concern in most areas of psychology. In an illustration of this diversity, I described my interest in controlled uses of memory at a social gathering; my new acquaintances, without realizing the non sequitur, subsequently raised issues about self control and loss of control-issues much more relevant to their own interests in psychological phenomena than are my narrow musings. Yet a second thought devoted to the semantics of control reveals underlying commonalities. For example, when older people begin to have problems with controlled …

Capacity And Procedural Accounts Of Impaired Memory In Depression, Paula T. Hertel, T. Meiser

Psychology Faculty Research

Findings of impaired memory in states of dysphoria or depression are summarized and subsumed under different accounts of mood-related memory deficits. Theoretical accounts based on the assumption of a storage system of limited capacity are compared to accounts which emphasize the role of procedures and strategies in attending and remembering. Two reanalyses of a recent experiment in the process-dissociation paradigm are reported. They address issues of dysphoria-related differences in automatic versus controlled uses of memory in a task of word-stem completion. The two reanalyses rest on different assumptions about the relation between automatic and controlled components, but they converge in …

Depression-Related Impairments In Prospective Memory, S. S. Rude, Paula T. Hertel, W. Jarrold, J. Covich, S. Hedlund

Psychology Faculty Research

Time-based prospective memory, the ability to carry out a future intention at a specified time, was found to be impaired in a community sample of clinically depressed adults, relative to a nondepressed sample. Nondepressed participants monitored the time more frequently and, in the final block of the task, accelerated time-monitoring as the target time for the prospective memory response approached. These results are consistent with previous findings of depression-related impairments in retrospective memory tasks that require controlled, self-initiated processing.

Relation Between Rumination And Impaired Memory In Dysphoric Moods, Paula T. Hertel

Psychology Faculty Research

College students in dysphoric or nondysphoric moods studied pairs of words and later took a fragment-completion test of memory for targets from the pairs (under process-dissociation procedures for obtaining estimates of controlled and automatic retrieval; L. L. Jacoby, 1996). Between the study and test phases, some participants waited quietly for 7 min; others rated self-focused materials designed to invoke ruminations in the dysphoric group; and still others rated self-irrelevant and task-irrelevant materials. A dysphoria-related impairment in controlled retrieval occurred in the first 2 conditions but not in the 3rd condition. These results show that the nature of task-irrelevant thoughts contributes …

Solving Problems By Analogy: The Benefits And Detriments Of Hints And Depressed Moods, Paula T. Hertel, Alicia J. Knoedler

Psychology Faculty Research

In Experiment 1, mildly depressed (dysphoric) and nondysphoric subjects tried to solve logic, problems that were analogous to subsequent target problems; then they attempted target solutions with or wit hour hints in the form of the analogues' themes. Target solutions were impaired by the hints in the nondysphoric group alone. Experiment 2A was a no-training control to verify that transfer did indeed occur. In Experiment 2B, all subjects received hints in the transfer phase; the training phase was either problem oriented (as in Experiment 1) or memory oriented. Again, nondysphoric subjects solved fewerproblems following problem-oriented training than did both dysphoric …

Practical Aspects Of Emotion And Memory, Paula T. Hertel

Psychology Faculty Research

Can anyone doubt that the study of emotion and memory should have practical implications? Surely not those among us who have had emotional experiences and sometimes try to forget them, to remember them, or to remember other things while having them. Extreme examples include the witness to a robbery and the victim of abuse. Less dramatically but far more commonly, anxious or depressed people perform everyday acts that are memory dependent. Indeed, a practical or useful science of memory should have a great deal to say about how memory works under such emotional conditions.

Depression And Memory: Are Impairments Remediable Through Attentional Control?, Paula T. Hertel

Psychology Faculty Research

People who are in depressed mood states or who are formally diagnosed as clinically depressed frequently complain of impaired memory. Such complaints have been substantiated by laboratory research, most of which supports the theoretical assumption that attentional resources play a causal role in producing the impairments. Specific theoretical frameworks do differ, however, in the proposed nature of this role and in their corresponding implications for remediation. The most prevalent positions are versions of a capacity framework (e.g., cognitive effort or resource allocation). 1 If you are depressed, according to the capacity framework, your attentional resources are either reduced neurochemically or …

Effects Of Alcohol And Expectancy Upon Episodic Memory In Individuals Reporting Alcoholic Blackouts, W. R. Miller, Paula T. Hertel, C. Saucedo, R. K. Hester

Psychology Faculty Research

In a within-subject placebo design, 10 heavy drinkers reporting alcoholic blackouts showed significant decrements in episodic memory when receiving alcohol but not on days when a placebo was given. Parallel deficits were observed on recall and recognition measures. On placebo days, self-ratings of intoxication were related to the degree of observed performance decrement. Memory deficits appear to be primarily pharmacologic rather than expectancy effects of drinking.

Emotionality In Free Recall: Language Specificity In Bilingual Memory, L. J. Anooshian, Paula T. Hertel

Psychology Faculty Research

Bilingual subjects (Spanish English) who had acquired fluency in their second language after 8 years of age rated 18 emotional and 18 neutral words for ease of pronunciation, implied activity, or emotionality; half of each type was presented in Spanish and half in English. During a subsequent, unexpected test of free recall subjects recalled more emotional than neutral words, but only for words that had been presented in the native language. This finding applied across native-language groups and suggests that emotion provides a basis for language specificity in bilingual memory.

Implications Of External Memory For Investigations Of Mind, Paula T. Hertel

Psychology Faculty Research

External memory–records of experiences that are maintained in repositories that are external to their users–provides context for many everyday cognitive acts. Some initial research has shown that such context influences learning, remembering, and judgements of knowing. The scope of both basic and applied memory research should be broadened in ways that address issues about the interaction of external memory and mind.

Cognition, Emotion, And Memory: Some Applications And Issues, H. C. Ellis, Paula T. Hertel

Psychology Faculty Research

This chapter describes some ways in which the psychology of cognition, emotion, and memory can or might be applied in several practical settings. Recent years have seen a rapid growth in research on cognition and emotion and this research has been summarized in a variety of sources (e.g., Ellis & Ashbrook, 1988, 1989; Ellis, Varner, & Becker, in press; Fiedler & Forgas, 1988; lsen, 1984; Kuiken, 1989; Williams, Watts, MacLeod, & Mathews, 1988). Moreover, a new journal appeared in 1987, Cognition and Emotion, which is entirely devoted to relations among emotional states and the full range of cognitive processes …

Improving Memory And Mood Through Automatic And Controlled Procedures Of Mind, Paula T. Hertel

Psychology Faculty Research

Memory procedures and emotional states function together. Affective tone permeates episodes of memory functioning. Memory functions centrally in episodes of emotional disturbance, serving to feed the episode with fuel from past events or to repress those events when one hopes to escape or avoid the episode. When cognitive procedures are impaired by emotional states such as depression and anxiety, people do not perform the tasks and achieve the goals that could help to repair their moods. In the context of these considerations, then, we must view the improvement of memory as not merely a possible outcome of change in emotional …

Emotion, Mood, And Memory, Paula T. Hertel

Psychology Faculty Research

The ways in which we attend, learn, and remember are related to our transitory moods and to our enduring emotional states. This assertion is based on research performed by experimental and clinical psychologists who use a variety of methods. In some studies, psychologists measure differences in emotional states and determine whether those differences are associated with differences in the ways that the participants perform cognitive tasks. These studies usually focus on unpleasant emotions and moods, such as depression and anxiety. In other studies, psychologists attempt to induce either unpleasant or pleasant moods in the participants (perhaps by having them listen …

Recalling In A State Of Natural Or Experimental Depression, Paula T. Hertel, S. S. Rude

Psychology Faculty Research

In three experiments we attempted to extend the cognitive-effort account of depressive deficits in memory to naturally depressed college students. This account maintains that depression reduces attentional resources, thereby impairing performance on demanding tasks, and has received support through experimental inductions of depressed moods. Nondepressed, naturally depressed, and (in Experiment 2) experimentally depressed college students performed unannounced tests of free recall following learning tasks with two levels of difficulty and (in Experiment 2) two degrees of structure. In Experiments 1 and 2 we measured cognitive effort on those tasks via latencies on a secondary task. Latencies and subsequent recall increased …

Remembering With And Without Awareness In A Depressed Mood: Evidence Of Deficits In Initiative, Paula T. Hertel, T. S. Hardin

Psychology Faculty Research

We propose that depressive deficits in remembering are revealed in tasks that allow the spontaneous use of strategies; tasks that bypass or direct the use of strategies should not produce depressive deficits. College students received depressive- or neutral-mood inductions after answering questions worded to reflect homophones' less common meaning. After the inductions, subjects spelled old and new homophones and showed no effect of the depressive inductions on unaware memory for the old homophones. Subsequent tests of recognition did, however, reveal differences according to the induced moodor the presence of naturally occurring depression (in Experiment 3). The differences, evidence of nondepressed …