How negative mood hinders belief updating in depression: results from two experimental studies.

BACKGROUND: In two experimental studies, we tested the hypothesis that negative mood would hinder the revision of negative beliefs in response to unexpectedly positive information in depression, whereas positive mood was expected to enhance belief updating. METHODS: In study 1 (N = 101), we used a subclinical sample to compare the film-based induction of sad v. happy mood with a distraction control group. Subsequently, participants underwent a well-established paradigm to examine intra-individual changes in performance-related expectations after unexpectedly positive performance feedback. In study 2, we applied the belief-updating task from study 1 to an inpatient sample (N = 81) and induced sad v. happy mood via film-clips v. recall of autobiographic events. RESULTS: The results of study 1 showed no significant group differences in belief updating; the severity of depressive symptoms was a negative predictor of belief revision, though, and there was a non-significant trend suggesting that the presence of sad mood hindered belief updating in the subgroup of participants with a diagnosed depressive episode. Study 2 revealed that participants updated their expectations significantly less in line with positive feedback when they underwent the induction of negative mood prior to feedback, relative to positive mood. CONCLUSIONS: By indicating that the presence of negative mood can hinder the revision of negative beliefs in clinically depressed people, our findings suggest that learning from new experiences can be hampered if state negative mood is activated. Thus, interventions relying on learning from novel positive experiences should aim at reducing state negative mood in depression.

Same same, but different: effects of likelihood framing on concerns about a medical disease in patients with somatoform disorders, major depression, and healthy people.

BACKGROUND: Research has shown that patients with somatoform disorders (SFD) have difficulty using medical reassurance (i.e. normal results from diagnostic testing) to revise concerns about being seriously ill. In this brief report, we investigated whether deficits in adequately interpreting the likelihood of a medical disease may contribute to this difficulty, and whether patients' concerns are altered by different likelihood framings. METHODS: Patients with SFD (N = 60), patients with major depression (N = 32), and healthy volunteers (N = 37) were presented with varying likelihoods for the presence of a serious medical disease and were asked how concerned they are about it. The likelihood itself was varied, as was the format in which it was presented (i.e. negative framing focusing on the presence of a disease v. positive framing emphasizing its absence; use of natural frequencies v. percentages). RESULTS: Patients with SFD reported significantly more concern than depressed patients and healthy people in response to low likelihoods (i.e. 1: 100 000 to 1:10), while the groups were similarly concerned for likelihoods ⩾1:5. Across samples, the same mathematical likelihood caused significantly different levels of concern depending on how it was framed, with the lowest degree of concern for a positive framing approach and higher concern for natural frequencies (e.g. 1:100) than for percentages (e.g. 1%). CONCLUSIONS: The results suggest a specific deficit of patients with SFD in interpreting low likelihoods for the presence of a medical disease. Positive framing approaches and the use of percentages rather than natural frequencies can lower the degree of concern.

Doctors Speak: A Qualitative Study of Physicians' Prescribing of Antidepressants in Functional Bowel Disorders.

Tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs) are frequently prescribed for chronic functional pain disorders. Although the mechanism of action targets pain perception, treating patients with TCAs for disorders conceptualized as "functional" can promote stigmatization in these patients because it hints at psychological dimensions of the disorder. The goal of this study was to understand how physicians prescribe TCAs in the face of this challenge. We interviewed eleven gastroenterologists in tertiary care clinics specializing in functional gastrointestinal disorders, such as irritable bowel syndrome. We found that the physicians interviewed (1) were aware of the stigma attached to taking antidepressants for a medical condition, (2) emphasized biological, as opposed to psychological, mechanisms of action, (3) while focusing on biological mechanisms, they nevertheless prescribed TCAs in a way that is highly attentive to the psychology of expectations, making specific efforts to adjust patients' expectations to be realistic and to reframe information that would be discouraging and (4) asked patients to persist in taking TCAs despite common and, at times, uncomfortable side effects. In this context of shared decision making, physicians described nuanced understanding and behaviours necessary for treating the complexity of functional disorders and emphasized the importance of a strong patient-provider relationship.

Differential associations of positive and negative expectations with depressive symptoms.

BACKGROUND: Recent research suggests that dysfunctional expectations are a particularly important subtype of cognitions in depression. However, it is unclear whether depressive symptoms are related to the presence of negative expectations, the absence of positive expectations, or both. METHODS: Using hierarchical linear regression analyses, the present study examined the predictive value of positive situation-specific expectations, negative situation-specific expectations, dispositional optimism, and dysfunctional attitudes for depressive symptoms 8 weeks later in a nonclinical sample (N = 157). It also examined whether the relationship between dispositional optimism and dysfunctional attitudes with depressive symptoms is mediated through situational expectations. RESULTS: Cross-sectionally, depressive symptoms were more strongly associated with the presence of negative expectations than with the absence of positive expectations. In the longitudinal and mediation analyses, none of the cognitive variables had significant associations with depressive symptoms at follow-up beyond the strong influence of baseline depressive symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: The presence of negative expectations was cross-sectionally more strongly associated with depressive symptoms than a lack of positive expectations, presumably due to higher variability in negative expectations in this nonclinical sample. The longitudinal and mediation analyses failed to find significant incremental effects of any of the cognitive variables because baseline depression explained the largest proportion of variance.

Remotely Provided Open-Label Placebo Reduces Frequency of and Impairment by Allergic Symptoms.

OBJECTIVE: Placebos being prescribed with full honesty and disclosure (i.e., open-label placebo [OLP]) have been shown to reduce symptom burden in a variety of conditions. With regard to allergic rhinitis, previous research provided inconclusive evidence for the effects of OLP, possibly related to a separate focus on either symptom severity or symptom frequency. Overcoming this limitation of previous research, the present study aimed to examine the effects of OLP on both the severity and frequency of allergic symptoms. METHODS: In a randomized-controlled trial, patients with allergic rhinitis ( N = 74) were randomized to OLP or treatment as usual (TAU). Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, OLP was administered remotely in a virtual clinical encounter. Participants took placebo tablets for 14 days. The primary outcomes were the severity and frequency of allergic symptoms. The secondary end point was allergy-related impairment. RESULTS: OLP did not significantly improve symptom severity over TAU ( F (1,71) = 3.280, p = .074, η2 = 0.044) but did reduce symptom frequency ( F (1,71) = 7.272, p = .009, η2 = 0.093) and allergy-related impairment more than TAU ( F (1,71) = 6.445, p = .013, η2 = 0.083), reflecting medium to large effects. The use of other antiallergic medication did not influence the results. CONCLUSIONS: Although OLP was able to lower the frequency of allergic symptoms and allergy-related impairment substantially, its effects on symptom severity were weaker. The remote provision of OLP suggests that physical contact between patients and providers might not be necessary for OLP to work.

How childhood maltreatment alters perception and cognition - the predictive processing account of borderline personality disorder.

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a severe mental disorder, comprised of heterogeneous psychological and neurobiological pathologies. Here, we propose a predictive processing (PP) account of BPD to integrate these seemingly unrelated pathologies. In particular, we argue that the experience of childhood maltreatment, which is highly prevalent in BPD, leaves a developmental legacy with two facets: first, a coarse-grained, alexithymic model of self and others - leading to a rigidity and inflexibility concerning beliefs about self and others. Second, this developmental legacy leads to a loss of confidence or precision afforded beliefs about the consequences of social behavior. This results in an over reliance on sensory evidence and social feedback, with concomitant lability, impulsivity and hypersensitivity. In terms of PP, people with BPD show a distorted belief updating in response to new information with two opposing manifestations: rapid changes in beliefs and a lack of belief updating despite disconfirmatory evidence. This account of distorted information processing has the potential to explain both the instability (of affect, self-image, and interpersonal relationships) and the rigidity (of beliefs about self and others) which is typical of BPD. At the neurobiological level, we propose that enhanced levels of dopamine are associated with the increased integration of negative social feedback, and we also discuss the hypothesis of an impaired inhibitory control of the prefrontal cortex in the processing of negative social information. Our account may provide a new understanding not only of the clinical aspects of BPD, but also a unifying theory of the corresponding neurobiological pathologies. We conclude by outlining some directions for future research on the behavioral, neurobiological, and computational underpinnings of this model, and point to some clinical implications of it.

Patients' pre- and postoperative expectations as predictors of clinical outcomes six months after cardiac surgery.

The aim of this study was to investigate not only preoperative expectations (as shown previously), but also postoperative expectations of patients predict clinical outcomes six months after cardiac surgery. Furthermore, the study sought to examine illness behavior as a possible pathway through which expectations may affect postoperative well-being. Seventy patients scheduled for cardiac surgery were examined one day before surgery, ~7-10 days after surgery, and six months after surgery. Regression analyses indicated that disability at follow-up (primary outcome) was significantly predicted by postoperative (ß = -.342, p = .008), but not by preoperative expectations (ß = -.213, p = .069). Similar results were found for the secondary outcomes, i.e. quality of life and depressive symptoms. A bootstrapped mediation analysis showed that although both postoperative expectations and illness behavior had significant unique effects on disability, there was no significant mediation effect. While previous studies have mainly focused on patients' preoperative expectations, the present is the first to emphasize the predictive value of patients' expectations a few days after surgery, pointing to the potential of interventions targeting postoperative expectations. However, given the non-significant results of the mediation analysis, it remains unclear how exactly patients' expectations affect clinical outcomes in cardiac surgery.

Why dysfunctional expectations in depression persist - Results from two experimental studies investigating cognitive immunization.

BACKGROUND: Research has revealed that negative expectations impact depressive symptoms. However, research on the change of dysfunctional expectations in depression is lacking so far. Therefore, the present research aimed to fill this gap by testing the hypothesis that people with the major depressive disorder (MDD), contrary to healthy individuals, maintain their expectations despite experiences that positively disconfirm expectations. Further, it was hypothesized that cognitive immunization (a cognitive reappraisal of the disconfirming evidence) is a mechanism underlying the persistence of expectations. METHOD: In Study 1, we compared individuals with MDD (N = 58) to healthy individuals (N = 59). Participants worked on the same performance test and received standardized feedback that either confirmed or disconfirmed their initial performance expectations. In Study 2, we investigated the effects of cognitive immunization on expectation change among 59 individuals reporting elevated levels of depression by varying the appraisal of expectation-disconfirming feedback. RESULTS: Results from Study 1 show that in the expectation-disconfirming condition, healthy individuals changed their expectations, whereas individuals with MDD did not. No such difference between the two groups was found for expectation-confirming feedback. Results from Study 2 indicated that varying cognitive immunization impacted expectation change, thus suggesting a crucial role of cognitive immunization in expectation change. CONCLUSIONS: These two studies indicated that individuals suffering from depression have more difficulties in changing their expectations after disconfirming experiences than do healthy individuals, and cognitive immunization might be a core mechanism underlying expectation persistence. Therefore, psychotherapeutic interventions should aim to inhibit cognitive immunization processes to enhance expectation change.

Hope in Medicine: Applying Multidisciplinary Insights.

Hope is a crucial aspect of human life and has been a topic of interest in many scholarly disciplines. The medical literature, however, has-with a few exceptions-failed to take account of conceptions of hope across other scholarly disciplines. Before exploring what makes hope a distinctive and important phenomenon in medical contexts, this article reviews prominent views on hope from philosophy, anthropology, theology, and psychology. To synthesize these different conceptions, the authors propose an integrative approach aimed at improving the understanding of hope in medicine. The authors use a modes-of-hoping framework to explain different phenomena related to hope in medicine, such as hope in the face of a dismal prognosis, in the disclosure of diagnostic information, and in the initiation of new treatments. Based on this tentative framework, possible directions for future empirical research are discussed. Beside further qualitative research into the patients' and physicians' understanding and experiences of hope, the authors urge a quantitative examination of the impact of hope (while recognizing that a quantitative approach might not able to capture hope's many intricacies). Finally, they discuss clinical and ethical implications with respect to a balance between physicians being honest and acknowledging patients' hope.

Using Different Expectation Mechanisms to Optimize Treatment of Patients With Medical Conditions: A Systematic Review.

OBJECTIVE: Patients' expectations have been shown to predict the course and treatment success of a variety of medical conditions. Therefore, expectation-focused psychological interventions (EFPIs) have been developed to use these expectation effects clinically. Importantly, EFPI differ with regard to the particular expectation mechanism being addressed, i.e., expectation optimization or expectation violation. The aims of this systematic review were to give an overview of the application of these expectation interventions and to evaluate their effectiveness. METHODS: Several databases were searched to identify clinical trials or experimental studies that conducted EFPI among participants with various medical conditions. Risk of bias was evaluated using the Cochrane Risk of Bias tool. RESULTS: Eleven studies (N = 944) investigating different medical conditions (coronary heart disease, cancer, chronic pain) were included. Qualitative synthesis revealed positive effects of EFPI on clinical outcome variables in all studies. Expectation optimization approaches yielded particularly promising results. Because of the large heterogeneity of outcome measures, quantitative synthesis was not possible. CONCLUSION: This review highlights the potential of EFPI for optimizing treatment of patients with medical conditions. However, it seems that different expectation mechanisms might have different application possibilities. Therefore, we provide suggestions for further developing EFPI to tailor treatment and develop personalized psychological interventions. We argue that for this purpose, it is important to consider both disease-specific aspects and patients' personality traits. In addition, we discuss future challenges such as implementing EFPI into routine medical care.

Induced negative affect hinders self-referential belief updating in response to social feedback.

When people receive feedback from others, this is an opportunity for them to update their self-views. People with mental health problems (e.g., depression), however, often have difficulty using social feedback to update negative beliefs about themselves. To better understand when and how difficulties with integrating social feedback manifest, we investigated how current affect influences social feedback processing. Our preregistered hypothesis was that negative affect hinders change in participants' self-views in response to social feedback. In a nonclinical sample of little diversity (N = 117) in 2023, participants were invited to a laboratory examination in groups of three-five people. After indicating how they thought about themselves in terms of a number of personality traits (e.g., friendly), participants played a popular parlor game together for 45 min. Subsequently, they indicated how they perceived the other players in terms of their personality. Before receiving anonymous feedback, suggesting that the others perceived them as a highly likeable person, participants underwent the induction of negative versus positive affect versus a neutral control procedure. The results show that the induction of negative affect before receiving social feedback hindered its integration into participants' self-views, relative to the induction of positive affect. Changes in participants' self-views remained relatively stable also 1 day later, except for the control group, in which it slightly declined. These findings confirm that negative affect can indeed hamper the integration of (positive) social feedback. Since negative affect is prevalent in many mental disorders, this might contribute to their problems with social feedback processing. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Change in pain expectations but no open-label placebo analgesia: An experimental study using the heat pain paradigm.

BACKGROUND: Open-label placebos (OLP) prescribed without deception and with a convincing rationale have been shown to evoke powerful treatment effects. Patients' treatment expectations seem to influence the magnitude of the effect. OBJECTIVE: We examined if two different OLP rationales increased pain tolerance and reduced pain intensity and unpleasantness in a standardized heat pain experiment. METHODS: Participants (N = 71) who self-reported reoccurring pain for at least the last 3 months were randomly assigned to one of three groups. We compared a personal-emotional and a scientific-matter-of-fact rationale with a control group (CG) that received the same placebo without any rationale. The rationale suggested a desensitizing effect on pain perception and improved pain coping of the placebo, whereas in the CG it was introduced as an ointment for measurement. The primary outcomes were pre-post changes in pain tolerance, expected and experienced pain intensity and unpleasantness. RESULTS: Participants showed a decrease in expected pain intensity, but not expected pain unpleasantness for both rationales. There were no differences in pain tolerance and experienced pain intensity and unpleasantness. CONCLUSIONS: Our study suggests that evoking positive treatment expectations is not sufficient to elicit an OLP response. Possibly, the magnitude of expectations change in this study was not powerful enough to evoke an OLP effect. Additionally, it is possible that OLP effects in pain are unrelated to positive treatment expectations. The failure of OLP in our study is in contrast to a number of previous studies examining the effects of OLP in experimental and clinical pain. SIGNIFICANCE: This study provides evidence that positive treatment expectations are not sufficient to evoke an open-label placebo effect in a standardized heat pain experiment. We showed that two different rationales improved participants treatment expectations, but failed to evoke a placebo effect in comparison to a control group that received the same placebo, labelled as an ointment to improve measurement quality.

Are depressive symptoms linked to a reduced pupillary response to novel positive information?-An eye tracking proof-of-concept study.

Introduction: Depressive symptoms have been linked to difficulties in revising established negative beliefs in response to novel positive information. Recent predictive processing accounts have suggested that this bias in belief updating may be related to a blunted processing of positive prediction errors at the neural level. In this proof-of-concept study, pupil dilation in response to unexpected positive emotional information was examined as a psychophysiological marker of an attenuated processing of positive prediction errors associated with depressive symptoms. Methods: Participants (N = 34) completed a modified version of the emotional Bias Against Disconfirmatory Evidence (BADE) task in which scenarios initially suggest negative interpretations that are later either confirmed or disconfirmed by additional information. Pupil dilation in response to the confirmatory and disconfirmatory information was recorded. Results: Behavioral results showed that depressive symptoms were related to difficulties in revising negative interpretations despite disconfirmatory positive information. The eye tracking results pointed to a reduced pupil response to unexpected positive information among people with elevated depressive symptoms. Discussion: Altogether, the present study demonstrates that the adapted emotional BADE task can be appropriate for examining psychophysiological aspects such as changes in pupil size along with behavioral responses. Furthermore, the results suggest that depression may be characterized by deviations in both behavioral (i.e., reduced updating of negative beliefs) and psychophysiological (i.e., decreased pupil dilation) responses to unexpected positive information. Future work should focus on a larger sample including clinically depressed patients to further explore these findings.

Development and Psychometric Evaluation of the Hope in Medicine Scale.

Background: Hope is an integral, multi-dimensional part of seeking medical treatment. The aim of this study was to develop a self-report scale, the Hope in Medicine (HIM) scale, to measure different modes of hoping in relation to the course of symptoms, the effects of treatment, and supporting medical research. Method: We examined the psychometric properties of the scale in a sample of 74 allergic rhinitis patients participating in a 2-week randomized-controlled trial comparing open-label placebos (OLP) with treatment as usual (TAU). Results: The HIM scale had a Cronbach's α of .78. An exploratory factor analysis revealed four factors: realistic hope (i.e., hoping for specific positive outcomes such as improvement in symptoms), transcendent hope (i.e., non-directed hoping that things will turn out positively), utopian hope (i.e., hoping to contribute to greater knowledge), and technoscience hope (i.e., hoping for scientific breakthroughs). Speaking to the convergent validity of the scale, realistic hope was moderately related to treatment expectancies (r = .54); transcendent hope was related to optimism (r = .50), treatment expectancies (r = .37), self-efficacy (r = .36), and inversely correlated with pessimism (r = -.43). Hope subscales predicted neither course of symptoms nor impairment. Conclusion: The HIM scale is a questionnaire with adequate internal consistency allowing to assess four modes of hoping. Preliminary results for its convergent validity are promising. Yet, further validation is needed.

Does disconfirmatory evidence shape safety-and danger-related beliefs of trauma-exposed individuals?

Recent accounts of predictive processing in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) suggest that trauma-exposed individuals struggle to update trauma-related hypotheses predicting danger, which may be involved in the etiology and maintenance of this disorder. Initial research supports this account, documenting an association between trauma-exposure, impaired expectation updating, and PTSD symptoms. Yet, no study to date has examined biased belief updating in PTSD using a scenario-based approach.Objective: Here, we examined the predictive processing account among trauma-exposed and non-trauma-exposed individuals using a modified Trauma-Related version of the Bias Against Disconfirmatory Evidence task.Method: The task presents both danger-and safety-related scenarios highly relevant for trauma-exposed individuals. For each scenario, participants viewed several explanations and rated their plausibility. Their ability to update their initial interpretation following new-contradictory information was assessed.Results: Preregistered analyses did not reveal any significant findings. Based on indications that our sample may not have been sufficiently powered, we conducted exploratory analyses in an extended sample of participants. These analyses yielded a significant association between reduced belief updating and PTSD symptoms which was evident for disconfirming both safety and danger scenarios. However, the effect sizes we found were in the small-to-medium range.Conclusion: Although preliminary, our current findings support initial evidence that individuals with higher PTSD symptoms show a higher resistance to update their beliefs upon new disconfirmatory evidence. Our results should be interpreted cautiously in light of the extended sample and the limitations of the current study.

We developed a modified version of the Bias Against Disconfirmatory Evidence task.We found significant associations between PTSD symptoms and belief updating.The association was evident for disconfirming both safety and danger scenarios.

If the discrepancy between expectations and actual information is too large, expectation change decreases - A replication study.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Mental disorders have been related to aberrations in using novel positive information to revise established negative beliefs. Previous research used to make a binary distinction between belief-confirming vs. -disconfirming information, but recently it has been examined how varying levels of positive information is used to update beliefs. The present study aimed to replicate a recent finding suggesting that positive information that deviates to a large extent from people's prior expectations raises doubts about the credibility of new information and therefore hardly leads to change in expectations. METHODS: In a heterogenous sample (N = 144), participants were provided with slightly positive, moderately positive, or extremely positive information in relation to their prior expectations about other people's behaviour. RESULTS: Replicating previous research, the present study found that expectation change was greatest for moderately positive information. It also provided evidence for a possible mechanism underlying the inverse U-shaped relationship between the positivity of new information and change in expectations: Extremely positive information was devalued through defensive cognitive strategies, referred to as cognitive immunisation. LIMITATIONS: Unlike previous research, the belief update task used in this study did not show any association with depressive symptoms, so it is questionable how suitable it is to study biased belief updating in depression. CONCLUSIONS: Unlike traditional learning models, the present results suggest a tipping point above which the discrepancy between expectation and outcome is suspiciously large, so that the degree of expectation change decreases.

Factors influencing the update of beliefs regarding controversial political issues.

Selectively integrating new information contributes to belief polarization and compromises public discourse. To better understand factors that underlie biased belief updating, I conducted three pre-registered studies covering different controversial political issues. The main hypothesis was that cognitively devaluing new information hinders belief updating. Support for this hypothesis was found in only one of the three issues. The only factor that consistently influenced belief updating across issues was the discrepancy between prior beliefs and new information. These results suggest that usually people do use evidence to correct their beliefs, but may refuse to do so if doubts about its generalizability arise.

Biased belief updating in depression.

Cognitive approaches to depression have benefitted from recent research on belief updating, examining how new information is used to alter beliefs. This review presents recent advances in understanding various sources of bias in belief updating in depression. Specifically, research has demonstrated that people with depression have difficulty revising negative beliefs in response to novel positive information, whereas belief updating in depression is not related to an enhanced integration of negative information. In terms of mechanisms underlying the deficient processing of positive information, research has shown that people with depression use defensive cognitive strategies to devalue novel positive information. Furthermore, the disregard of novel positive information can be amplified by the presence of state negative affect, and the resulting persistence of negative beliefs in turn perpetuates chronically low mood, contributing to a self-reinforcing negative feedback loop of beliefs and affect. Synthesising previous research, this review proposes a coherent framework of when belief change is likely to occur, and argues that future research also needs to elucidate why people with depression hesitate to abandon negative beliefs. Recent insights from belief updating have not only improved the understanding of the psychopathology of depression, but also have the potential to improve its cognitive-behavioural treatment.

The relationship between multiple traumatic events and the severity of posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms - evidence for a cognitive link.

Background: Previous research has shown that multiple traumatic experiences cumulatively increase the risk for the development of severe symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Yet, little is known about the specific psychological mechanism through which this increased risk comes about.Objective: In the present study, we examined a possible cognitive link between multiple traumatic events and PTSD symptom severity through dysfunctional cognitions and expectations.Methods: A sample of patients with a diagnosed PTSD (N = 70; MAge = 42.06; 82% female) and high symptom burden (IES-R M = 79.24) was examined. On average, patients had experienced 5.31 different traumatic events. In a structural equation model, we tested the hypothesis that the relationship between multiple traumatic experiences and PTSD symptom severity is mediated through dysfunctional general cognitions and dysfunctional situation-specific expectations. General trauma-related cognitions were assessed with the Posttraumatic Cognition Inventory (PTCI) and trauma-related situational expectations were assessed with the Posttraumatic Expectations Scale (PTES).Results: The direct effect of the number of traumatic events on PTSD symptom severity was non-significant. Instead, as hypothesised, there was evidence for a significant indirect effect via dysfunctional general cognitions and situation-specific expectations.Conclusions: The current results further specify the cognitive model of PTSD by indicating that the relationship between the number of traumatic events and PTSD symptom severity is mediated through dysfunctional cognitions and expectations. These findings emphasise the importance of focused cognitive treatment approaches that seek to modify dysfunctional cognitions and expectations in people with multiple traumatic experiences.

This study shows a cognitive link between the experience of multiple traumatic events and the severity of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms.The aforementioned relationship is mediated through trauma-related general cognitions and situational expectations.The results provide further evidence for the cognitive model of PTSD and further specify it by considering different types of trauma-related cognitions.

Testing Bayesian models of belief updating in the context of depressive symptomatology.

OBJECTIVES: Predictive processing approaches to belief updating in depression propose that depression is related to more negative and more precise priors. Also, belief updating is assumed be negatively biased in comparison to normative Bayesian updating. There is a lack of efficient methods to mathematically model belief updating in depression. METHODS: We validated a novel performance belief updating paradigm in a nonclinical sample (N = 133). Participants repeatedly participated in a non-self-related emotion recognition task and received false feedback. Effects of the feedback manipulation and differences in depressive symptoms on belief updating were analysed in Bayesian multilevel analyses. RESULTS: Beliefs were successfully manipulated through the feedback provided. Depressive symptoms were associated with more negative updating than normative Bayesian updating but results were influenced by few cases. No evidence of biased change in beliefs or overly precise priors was found. Depressive symptoms were associated with more negative updating of generalised performance beliefs. CONCLUSIONS: There was cautious support for negatively biased belief updating associated with depressive symptoms, especially for generalised beliefs. The content of the task may not be self-relevant enough to cause strong biases. Further explication of Bayesian models of depression and replication in clinical samples is needed.