8: Schemata and Emotional Disorders Flashcards
(41 cards)
What are schemata?
Cognitive frameworks for organising and storing information.
what do schemata facilitate?
Faster processing of information.
How does activation of schemata affect processing?
Through perception and memory.
What do maladaptive schemata cause?
Biased processing so they maintain symptoms, bias retrieval style and type of memories and affect mood.
What 3 processes show biases in schemata?
Negative interpretation of ambiguous situations, focus of attention on threat and catastrophising negative social situations.
What does CBT look to change in schemata?
Making people consciously aware of automatic processes in order to change them.
What were the differences between social phobic and control speech scripts?
Social phobic scripts were less concrete, more negatively toned and reflected more experiences of anxiety and control scrips had more steps and detail.
What are the key anxiety schemata?
Attending to cues related to threat and perceiving threatening meaning of ambiguous events.
What are the key depression schemata?
Noticing failures more than successes, inferring the worst from situations that could be positive and blaming the self for failures.
What is interpretation?
Semantic process which involves combining different perspectives of a social situation in order to resolve ambiguity.
What is the interpretation bias in depression?
Increased negative and decreased positive interpretations.
What is the interpretation bias in social anxiety?
Negative interpretations about ambiguous social cues?
What are flexible interpretations?
Combining different aspects of a situation simultaneously and integrating novel information as it becomes available.
What are inflexible interpretations?
Difficulties in revising original interpretations when disconfirming evidence is presented.
How did Everaert et al. study inflexible interpretations?
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.
What were the results of Everaert et al’s study?
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.
How did Segal et al. study cognitive reactivity?
They measured dysfunctional attitudes before and after a mood induction in formerly depressed people who had been through CBT or pharmacotherapy.
What were the results of Segal et al’s study?
Pharmacotherapy group showed a significant increase in dysfunctional attitudes after the mood induction.
What is extreme thinking?
The extent to which we engage with negative schemata and show rigidity and inflexibility.
What is higher post-treatment extreme thinking associated with?
Higher rate of relapse, even when controlling for depression severity.
What leaves people at such high risk of relapse?
Underlying schemata not actually going away, just not currently being activated.
Give 2 examples of dysfunctional attitudes.
Perfectionistic standards and concern over others.
What were the results of Beevers et al’s study?
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.
What were the results of Tang and de Rubis’ study?
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.
