The British journal of clinical psychology / the British Psychological Society
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Comparative Study
Perception, mental imagery and reality discrimination in hallucinating and non-hallucinating schizophrenic patients.
In this study the hypothesis was tested that hallucinations result from confusing external and internal stimulus sources, i.e., perception and imagery, respectively. ⋯ Hallucinations may result from increased vividness of mental imagery, and their severity increases with larger impairments in reality discrimination. It is recommended that research into, and cognitive behavioural therapy for, hallucinations should also focus on their sensory qualities.
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Recent cognitive theories propose that attentional biases cause or maintain anxiety disorders. This study had several aims: (i) to investigate such biases in generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) using naturalistic, ecologically valid stimuli, namely, emotional facial expressions; (ii) to test the emotionality hypothesis by examining biases for happy as well as threat faces; and (iii) to assess the time course of the attentional bias. ⋯ The study confirmed not only that GAD patients show a bias in selective attention to threat, relative to controls, but also that this bias operates for naturalistic, non-verbal stimuli. As the attentional biases for threat and happy faces appeared to develop over a different time frame, different underlying mechanisms may be responsible.
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The present study investigated covert and overt attributional styles in individuals experiencing a first episode of psychosis. It was hypothesized that those individuals experiencing paranoia, as operationalized by higher scores on the suspiciousness item of the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS) would perform differently on both covert and overt measures of attributional style when compared to those individuals who scored lower on the BPRS suspiciousness item. ⋯ The findings suggest that increasing suspiciousness does predict attributional style in the early stages of psychosis, although the relationship appears weaker than in reports with more chronic psychotic patient samples. Longitudinal research is needed to ascertain whether attributional style is a stable characteristic in psychosis, or whether it fluctuates between periods of remission and active psychosis.
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Comparative Study
Depressive thinking and dysfunctional schematic mental models.
To examine the replicability and generalizability of findings suggesting that mood-dependent negative thinking in depression reflects changes in the schematic mental models through which the world is interpreted, rather than a generalized increase in accessibility of negative constructs. ⋯ For depressed participants in psychiatric treatment, results replicate previous findings, supporting the view that negative depressive thinking reflects a change in schematic mental models through which the world is interpreted. Results are inconsistent with predictions from the construct accessibility view. The results have methodological implications for the use of the sentence completion task in future studies.
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The aim of this article is to demonstrate the utility of the concept of cognitive dissonance in clinical psychology by showing how it may underlie an existing intervention. The technique of motivational interviewing (MI) is taken as an example of an area where the literature on cognitive dissonance can find such an application. The further aim of this exercise is to utilize insights from cognitive dissonance to suggest possible modifications to the intervention as it currently stands. ⋯ The concept of cognitive dissonance can clearly be seen to be of use in understanding the mechanism of action of MI. It can further be of use in guiding modifications to this existing intervention. This concept, and others available through the experimental psychological literature, can be of use in all branches of clinical psychology.