Schedule of Events | Symposia

Distraction-related Disruption of Ruminative Thoughts

Poster Session D - Monday, March 31, 2025, 8:00 – 10:00 am EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom
Also presenting in Data Blitz Session 3 - Saturday, March 29, 2025, 10:30 am – 12:00 pm EDT, Constitution A.

Natalie M. Nielsen¹ (natalie.nielsen@donders.ru.nl), Karolina Figa², Ruben van den Bosch^1,2, Guusje Collin¹, Roshan Cools¹; ¹Radboud University Medical Centre, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Nijmegen, Netherlands, ²Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands

Rumination, the excessive maintenance of negative information in working memory (WM), is a core symptom of anxiety and depression, both associated with WM deficits. Research on long-term memory shows that retrieval puts memories into an active state, therefore rendering it vulnerable to reconsolidation. By analogy, Mallett and Lewis-Peacock (2019) found that WM content prioritised for attention is disproportionally vulnerable to distraction. This study aimed to replicate these findings and tested whether the distraction effect is stronger for negative than neutral memories. We enriched the double retro-cue paradigm of Mallett and Lewis-Peacock with a valence manipulation. Participants associated negative and neutral autobiographical thoughts with images from separate categories and rated their feelings about them. Subsequently, subjects encoded two images of distinct categories, prioritised one and rated the memory paired with it. Before being cued to stay with or switch items, participants were distracted or not. Finally, subjects again rated the prioritised thought and indicated whether the image matched the probe. About 24 hours later, participants re-rated their thoughts to access reconsolidation effects. We used Bayesian linear mixed effects modelling to analyse reaction times and accuracy. Contrary to expectations, valence did not affect performance. However, participants rated negative thoughts as less negative 24 hours after the task, suggesting that the entire task may have initiated reconsolidation. Moreover, exploratory analyses imply that distraction-related decreases in the negative valence of ruminative thoughts are greater for prioritised than non-prioritised items. This raises questions about the efficacy of combining current treatment of rumination with distraction therapy.

Topic Area: EMOTION & SOCIAL: Emotion-cognition interactions