Maladaptive emotion regulation strategies mediate the relationship between biased cognitions and depression

Introduction: Depression has previously been found to emerge from and be perpetuated by negative cognitive biases. However, a plethora of underlying psychological mechanisms are likely to be involved in the relationship. The current study investigated whether maladaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies such as self-blame, rumination, and catastrophising may mediate the link between negative cognitive biases and depression.Methods: Participants (n = 251) completed the study via the internet data collection software, Pavlovia. The Self-Referent Encoding Task was used to measure self-referential and memory biases while maladaptive emotion regulation strategies and depression were assessed using the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire and the Depression Anxiety Scales, respectively.Results: Results showed that maladaptive strategies mediate the relationship between cognitive biases and depression. The tendency to blame oneself for playing an influential role in a negatively perceived life event seems to play a key role in the negative cognitive bias-depression relationship.Conclusion: Therapists should consider focusing their efforts on reducing self-blame when clients demonstrate evidence of self-referential and memory bias. Interventions may include refocusing blame on others, rather than the self

Getting our act together: an exploration of the mechanisms responsible for the affiliative changes evoked by interpersonal movement

This thesis explores the reasons why dyads whose movements are aligned (i.e., synchronous) report greater levels of affiliation than those whose movements are not (i.e., asynchronous). Though previous research has suggested that outcomes are influenced by self-other overlap, via action co-representation and/or self-other similarity, none has examined this directly, or considered the effects of participants' judgements about their co-actor's relative performance. Previous research has also neglected the fact that dyadic movement can be aligned or misaligned in a variety of ways (e.g., topologically in terms of what movements are made and temporally in terms of when the movements are made), providing little evidence for the mechanisms supporting the alignment-affiliation relationship. Across three experiments, dyads (N=534; 267 dyads) were randomly assigned to perform arm movements that were aligned or misaligned temporally or topologically. Control participants made matching arm movements while facing away from their co-actor, removing visual alignment cues and controlling for the effects of movement. Action co-representation, self-other similarity, and interaction judgments about alignment with the co-actor were tested. Evidence was found favouring the role of meta-judgments, while alignment, but not misalignment, affected affiliation. These findings suggest that high order judgments, and not self-other merging, may be responsible

Joint Action: Mental Representations, Shared Information and General Mechanisms for Coordinating with Others

Contains fulltext : 162706.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)In joint action, multiple people coordinate their actions to perform a task together. This often requires precise temporal and spatial coordination. How do co-actors achieve this? How do they coordinate their actions towards a shared task goal? Here we provide an overview of the mental representations involved in joint action, discuss how co-actors share sensorimotor information and what general mechanisms support coordination with others. By deliberately extending the review to aspects such as the cultural context in which a joint action takes place, we pay tribute to the complex and variable nature of this social phenomenon.7 p

Modeling intrinsic vulnerability of complex karst aquifers: modifying the COP method to account for sinkhole density and fault location

This study investigates a method of karst-aquifer vulnerability modeling that modifies the concentration-overburden-precipitation (COP) method to better account for structural recharge pathways through noncarbonate rocks, and applies advancements in remote-sensing sinkhole identification. Karst aquifers are important resources for human and agricultural needs worldwide, yet they are often highly complex and have high vulnerability to contamination. While many methods of estimating intrinsic vulnerability of karst aquifers have been developed, few methods acknowledge the complication of layered karst aquifer systems, which may include interactions between carbonate and noncarbonate rocks. This paper describes a modified version of the COP method applied to the Kaibab Plateau, Arizona, USA, the primary catchment area supplying springs along the north side of the Grand Canyon. The method involves two models that, together, produce higher resolution and greater differentiation of vulnerability for both the deep and perched aquifers beneath the Kaibab Plateau by replacing the original sinkhole distance parameter with sinkhole density. Analyses indicate that many karst regions would benefit from the methodology developed for this study. Regions with high-resolution elevation data would benefit from the incorporation of sinkhole density data in aquifer vulnerability assessments, and deeper semi-confined karst aquifers would benefit greatly from the consideration of fault location