Psychology Commons^™

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: …

Challenging Depressive Beliefs: Habitual And Recollective Components Of Stability Or Change, Paula T. Hertel, M. C. Acuff, J. Hernandez, E. Poppe

Psychology Faculty Research

Background and objectives. Depressed people tend to hold stable negative beliefs that resist challenges. Two experiments investigated the cognitive bases of belief change or resistance to change following the provision of supportive or challenging pseudo-evidence.

Method. Students scoring high and low on a measure of depressed state read belief statements, each followed by invented experimental evidence to either verify or discount them. Two days later, they read all the belief statements again, together with new statements, this time rating belief.

Results. The students agreed that the statements described common beliefs and that the evidence was plausible. Discounted statements were believed …