Abstract
Rumination and mindful decentering are cognitive responses to emotional experiences. Rumination involves dwelling on negative thoughts, whereas decentering involves observing negative thoughts as temporary mental events. However, the question of how rumination or decentering shape the effects of emotional experiences on cognitive or behavioral functioning remains ambiguous. The present study investigated the relationships between trait rumination, trait decentering, and working memory following exposure to interpersonal criticism. Results showed that rumination and decentering were negatively correlated, and predicted opposing patterns of working memory updating. Individuals high in rumination were slower to update working memory after criticism, but individuals high in decentering were faster to respond to the same trials. Increases in decentering predicted better task performance even at high levels of rumination. These findings suggest that a ruminative response style may impede the ability to clear irrelevant information from working memory under negative emotional conditions, but mindful decentering protects this ability.
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Acknowledgments
This study was funded by the departmental funds and gift donations to Sona Dimidjian.
Conflict of Interest
Roselinde H. Kaiser, Jessica R. Andrews-Hanna, Christina A. Metcalf and Sona Dimidjian declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Informed Consent
All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000 (5). Study procedures were approved by the University of Colorado Boulder Institutional Review Board. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study at the time of enrollment.
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No animal studies were carried out by the authors for this article.
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Kaiser, R.H., Andrews-Hanna, J.R., Metcalf, C.A. et al. Dwell or Decenter? Rumination and Decentering Predict Working Memory Updating After Interpersonal Criticism. Cogn Ther Res 39, 744–753 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-015-9697-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-015-9697-1