Cornelia Exner

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Verified

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• Ph.D.
• Professor (Full) at Leipzig University

Ekel gehört neben Ärger und Angst zu den negativen Basisemotionen und ist durch intensive unangenehme Gefühle und Körperempfindungen geprägt. Schon die einmalige Konfrontation mit einer stark ekelauslösenden Situation kann lebenslange Abneigung und Vermeidung auslösen. Ekel ist eine bisher im therapeutischen Kontext vernachlässigte und oft übersehe...

Purpose/Objective: This study investigated the development of posttraumatic growth (PTG) in relatively young persons with stroke. It examined the contribution of potential predictive variables and their changes over time. Research Method/Design: Participants completed questionnaires at baseline (n = 78, median time since injury = 47 days) and 3 (n...

Mimicry plays an important role in social interactions. Problems in social interactions are both diagnostic criteria as well as risk factors of psychological disorders. An interesting hypothesis is that mimicry behavior of people with psychological disorders is different compared to people who are not suffering from a psychological disorder, and th...

Introduction: There is a significant demand for interventions that reduce distress related to auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs). AVH distress is associated with the way voice hearers relate with AVHs. We aimed to establish the feasibility of a randomized controlled trial to demonstrate that adding "Relating Therapy" (RT) to treatment as usual (...

Tolin et al. (2004) developed the Chain of Contagion Task (CCT) to experimentally test the law of contagion and looming vulnerability (LV). In the CCT, contaminated pencils are brought into contact with clean pencils. The degree of contamination transferred to further new pencils refers to the level of biased contagious beliefs. Although this could...

Purpose/Objective: To investigate associations between illness appraisals, dyadic coping, and illness adjustment in individuals with stroke and their healthy partners. Method/Design: This longitudinal observational study examined dyadic data in 17 couples (patient and partner) after stroke. Patients and partners completed self-report measures on ev...

Background Shame is considered an important factor in the development and maintenance of many psychological disorders, e.g., social anxiety disorder, and an interesting target point for therapeutic intervention. Method In the present experimental study, we used an online-adopted Autobiographical Emotional Memory Task (AEMT) to induce shame and tes...

Researchers have proposed that emotion regulation can enhance or hinder socioaffective and sociocognitive processes. However, an integration of the evidence is still lacking. The present preregistered meta-analysis disentangled the link between adaptive and maladaptive emotion regulation and different aspects of social affect and cognition. Our fin...

Background Strong feelings of disgust and anxiety are maintaining factors in contamination-related obsessive–compulsive disorder (C-OCD). To this day there are not many studies that investigated strategies for changing pathological disgust. In a previous study, it was shown that imagery rescripting could successfully change disgust. However, whethe...

Zusammenfassung: Die Psychotherapieausbildungsreform hat die Weichen für eine Neupositionierung der Klinischen Neuropsychologie an den Universitäten gestellt. Durch die feste Verankerung der Neuropsychologie innerhalb der Psychotherapieaus- und weiterbildung ergeben sich neue Chancen für Forschung und Praxis. Allerdings besteht beim Aufbau der erfo...

Behavior therapy of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) aims to reduce avoidance, rituals, and discomfort in OCD-relevant situations. The Behavioral Avoidance Test (BAT) measures these behavior-related outcomes in individually challenging OCD-related situations. The association of the BAT with OCD severity measures and its relevance for treatment o...

Acquired brain injury (ABI) is often associated with personality changes. Pre- as well as post-injury personality traits are related to rehabilitation outcomes. However, it largely remains unclear whether post-injury personality shows any associations with rehabilitation outcomes over and above pre-injury personality. Using a case–control design, t...

Nach einer erworbenen Hirnschädigung leiden die Betroffenen oft nicht nur unter neuropsychologischen Störungen und Beeinträchtigungen der körperlichen Funktionsfähigkeit. Auch die Wahrscheinlichkeit, an einer psychischen Störung zu erkranken, ist deutlich erhöht. Der Beitrag stellt Vorkommen, mögliche Konsequenzen und Behandlungsansätze komorbider...

The present eye-tracking study investigates whether individuals with different levels of contamination fear are more likely to focus their attention on disgusting stimuli to explore them or to pull their attention away to avoid them. Ninety-two nonclinical participants with varying degrees of contamination fear performed a dot probe task. Eye-track...

Metacognitive therapy (MCT) has been shown to be a promising treatment approach for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The changeability of metacognitions by (metacognitive) treatment and its relevance to treatment outcome is, however, still unclear. The current study investigates, (1) if treatment with MCT or exposure and response prevention (ER...

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that occurs during childhood and adolescence. In many cases, however, the disorder persists into adulthood. In addition to the core symptoms of inattention, impulsivity and restlessness, the adult disorder is also characterized by affective dysregulation and impairment...

Objectives: Individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) often suffer from impairments in social functioning. This study investigates differences in empathy, compassion, and Theory of Mind (ToM) in individuals with OCD as a possible cause for social functioning deficits. Design: Sixty-four individuals diagnosed with OCD and 62 healthy in...

Cognitive behaviour therapy, especially exposure and response prevention (ERP) is the treatment of choice for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). However, a substantial number of patients refuse this method or fail to benefit enough. Metacognitive therapy (MCT) claims to successfully treat OCD without prolonged exposures. However, only case series...

Disgust has recently been characterized as a low-urgency emotion, particularly compared to fear. The aim of the present study is to clarify whether behavioral inhibition during disgust engagement is characteristic of a low-urgency emotion and thus indicates self-imposed attentional avoidance in comparison to fear. Therefore, 54 healthy participants...

After acquired brain injury (ABI) many patients suffer from persistent cognitive and emotional disturbances. The aim of this study was to investigate the treatment outcome of an integrated intervention, combining neuropsychological and cognitive behavioural therapy (nCBT), against waitlist (WL) in outpatients with ABI. Individuals seeking outpatien...

Objective: Models of ADHD consider the influence of situational factors on cognitive performance and symptoms. Method: The influence of acute physical exercise, stimulation through continuous fine motor movement, and performance-related reward on performance and ADHD symptoms was assessed. Thirty-six adults with ADHD and 36 healthy controls perform...

Objective: The alliance between patient and therapist is central for therapeutic progress. Social mimicry, the automatic imitation of another person, has been linked to building relationships. This is the first preregistered study to systematically investigate mimicry and its effects on the working alliance in real psychotherapy sessions. Method: S...

Abstract Background: Patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder are often misdiagnosed in clinical research and practice , resulting in delayed and inadequate treatment for patients. Deficient screening and diagnostic instruments contribute to this, since existing questionnaires for obsessive compulsive disorders are subject to limitations with re...

Introduction Self-reported cognitive deficits in adult Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity-Disorder (ADHD) are often not corroborated by standardized tests. Tests and reports also differ in their correspondence to aspects of psychosocial functioning. Executive function tasks (EF-tasks) using material close to daily life, may provide a more ecologically...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2019.00192.].

Zusammenfassung. Die metakognitive Therapie nach Wells wird den neueren kognitiven Therapieansätzen, der so genannten „dritten Welle“ der Verhaltenstherapie, zugeordnet. Sie sieht dysfunktionale metakognitive Annahmen sowie Regulationsprozesse als entscheidend für die Entstehung und Aufrechterhaltung psychischer Störungen an. Aufbauend auf dem meta...

Biased processing of disgust-related stimuli is increasingly discussed in addition to fear-related processing as a maintenance factor for contamination-based obsessive-compulsive disorder (C-OCD). However, the differential impact of fear and disgust on biased processing in C-OCD is not yet completely understood. Because it is difficult to distingui...

The most effective therapy for patients with a contamination-related sub-type of obsessive-compulsive disorder is exposure with response prevention. However, several studies show that a notable proportion of patients do not benefit from exposure. One possible reason is the high functionality of compulsive thoughts and actions in shortly reducing av...

The first pilot studies have shown the potential of imagery rescripting (ImR) for reducing contamination-related pathological disgust, although the effects were rather small. The aim of the present study is to investigate whether the effects of ImR in reducing disgust can be further increased by transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). tDCS...

Zusammenfassung Hintergrund. Die „nicht-invasiven“ Hirnstimulationstechniken transkranielle Gleichstromsti-mulation (tDCS) und transkranielle Magnetstimulation (TMS) werden in letzter Zeit immer häufiger als unterstützende oder alternative therapeutische Intervention bei Zwangsstörungen angewendet. Während für die Anwendung von TMS bei Zwangsstörun...

Background: It is still unclear how well the established attention deficit-hyperactive disorder (ADHD)-specific rating scales can differentiate between ADHD symptoms and symptoms of other mental disorders. Methods: A total of 274 patients with suspected adult ADHD were extensively examined clinically and guideline-conform in an ADHD outpatient c...

Individuals suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have been found to show deficits in implicitly learning probabilistic associations between events. Neuroimaging studies have associated these implicit learning deficits in OCD individuals with aberrant activation of the striatal system. Recent behavioral studies have highlighted that pr...

Contamination-related obsessive-compulsive disorder (C-OCD) is characterized by strongly experienced disgust and fear, in response to potentially contaminating stimuli. Both emotions differ in their susceptibility for change by habituation and extinction, which are important processes for the success of exposure therapy. Even though the response ra...

In the present study, attentional bias was investigated as a potential predisposing mechanism for the contamination-related subtype of obsessive-compulsive disorder (C-OC disorder). Fifty healthy participants with varying degrees of subclinical C-OC symptoms performed a visual search task to measure differential attentional biases elicited by neutr...

Lower performance on memory tests in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) has been repeatedly observed. However, the origins of these performance deficits are not sufficiently explained. In this study we tested if OCD-related extensive focus of attention on thoughts (heightened self-consciousness) could be an explanatory mechanism for lower memory p...

The assessment of executive functions (EF) often yields conflicting results between standardized tests and self-ratings (e. g., in depression or adult ADHD). For the present investigation, standardized EF-tasks were enriched in order to better represent executive demands of daily life. In the future this may improve the assessment and prediction of...

Objective: Many studies using different assessment methods have reported personality changes after acquired brain injury (ABI). However, to our knowledge, no prospective study has yet been conducted to examine whether previous cross-sectional and retrospective results can be replicated in a longitudinal prospective design. Further, because clinica...

Overestimating the occurrence of threatening events has been highlighted as a central cognitive factor in the maintenance of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The present study examined the different facets of this cognitive bias, its underlying mechanisms, and its specificity to OCD. For this purpose, threat estimation, probabilistic classifica...

While initial studies supported the hypothesis that cognitive characteristics that capture cognitive resources act as underlying mechanisms in memory deficits in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), the influence of those characteristics on selective attention has not been studied, yet. In this study, we examined the influence of cognitive self-con...

Objective: Which effects has the interdisciplinary collaboration including pharmacists and psychologists in depressive patients? Methods: In a 3-arm (each N = 10) randomized pilot study, we compared SC (standard care by specialized physicians in a tertiary care center) with SC + pharmaceutical medication management and SC + psychological counsel...

A cancer diagnosis affects patients' quality of life (QOL) as well as their pursuit of life goals. However, numerous studies have shown surprisingly stable QOL measures in cancer patients over time. We propose that life goal adjustment can act as the missing link in explaining this response shift. Thus, the aim of this study was to examine associat...

Neuropsychological assessments of participants with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) indicate impaired verbal memory if to be remembered material has to be organized. People with OCD also tend to focus their attention on their thoughts (heightened cognitive self-consciousness). We tested the hypothesis that cognitive self-consciousness causes ve...

Background and Objectives Obsessive compulsive (OC) checkers have been shown to be impaired in memory. However, when encoding OC-related material, OC checkers exhibit superior recall. This study aims to investigate emotion-related memory performance in relation to checking using newly developed OC-specific material. Additionally, metacognitive char...

Dysfunctional beliefs about the relationship between mental events and behaviors, also called thought action fusion, are important in the investigation of obsessive-compulsive symptoms. Objective: The structure and psychometric properties of a German version of the Thought Action Fusion Scale (TAP Scale) were assessed. Method: Different psychometri...

Growing evidences highlight the co-existence of negative and positive (e.g. posttraumatic growth) identity changes following stroke. Identity changes were assessed by comparing 42 survivors 21 months after stroke and healthy controls. A total of 26 stroke survivors participated in a semi-structured interview. Stroke survivors showed significantly h...

The present study examines the interplay between cognitive deficits and emotional context in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and social phobia (SP). Specifically, this study examines whether the inflexible use of efficient learning strategies in an emotional context underlies impairments in probabilistic classification learning (PCL) in OCD, an...

A tendency to overestimate threat has been shown in individuals with OCD. We tested the hypothesis that this bias in judgment is related to difficulties in learning probabilistic associations between events. Thirty participants with OCD and 30 matched healthy controls completed a learning experiment involving 2 variants of a probabilistic classific...

Background: Dysfunctional beliefs about the relationship between mental events and behaviors, also called thought action fusion, are important in the investigation of obsessive-compulsive symptoms. Objective: The structure and psychometric properties of a German version of the Thought Action Fusion Scale (TAF Scale) were assessed. Method: Different...

High prevalence and costs of depression underline the importance of understanding and treating vulnerability factors of depression such as rumination. Given the role of rumination in predicting the onset of new depressive episodes, it is important to learn why previously healthy people start to ruminate. One explanation is provided by the metacogni...

Die Metakognitive Therapie nach Wells wird den neueren Entwicklungen der kognitiven Verhaltenstherapie zugerechnet und befasst sich mit metakognitiven Uberzeugungen und Regulationsprozessen, welchen eine zentrale Rolle bei der Pathogenese psychischer Storungen beigemessen wird. Die vorliegende Arbeit stellt zunachst das Self-Regulatory Executive Fu...

Acquired brain injury (ABI) confronts patients with sudden and possibly permanent functional impairments which disrupt or block the attainment of important life goals and reduce subjective well-being (SWB). This longitudinal study aimed at investigating changes in the importance and the attainability of communion and agency life goals and their imp...

In recent year’s metacognitive theories – particularly the self-regulatory executive function model proposed by Wells and colleagues – have emerged as a potentially useful perspective from which to extend current cognitive-behavioral models for the mood and anxiety disorders. Metacognitions refer to different beliefs individuals endorse about their...

Despite controversy regarding the classification and diagnostic status of hoarding disorder, there remains a paucity of research on the nosology of hoarding that is likely to inform the classification debate. The present investigation examined the latent structure of hoarding in three, large independent samples. Data for three well-validated measur...

Regional brain volumes were compared between 23 participants with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and 36 healthy controls using magnetic resonance imaging with voxel-based morphometry. A volumetric decrease in OCD was found in the right mediofrontal cortex. An increase was found in the left temporoparietal cortex. Volume alterations were relate...

Previous studies have demonstrated that some individuals suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) are impaired in verbal memory performance. This study was designed to investigate the role of cognitive self-consciousness (CSC) as a putative underlying mechanism of these cognitive deficits. Verbal memory performance of 36 participants with...

Ursachen erworbener Hirnschädigungen stellen traumatische Hirnschädigungen (z. B. Schädel-Hirn-Traumata), Gefäßerkrankungen (z. B. Schlaganfälle, Hirnblutungen) und neurodegenerative Erkrankungen (z. B. Demenz vom Alzheimer-Typ) dar. Auch entzündliche Erkrankungen (z. B. multiple Sklerose) oder neoplastische Veränderungen (Hirntumore), Sauerstoffma...

Longitudinal studies have failed to find progressive hippocampal size reduction in schizophrenia. However, negative results may have been due to follow-up intervals at disease stages where no significant progressive brain changes occur. Furthermore, only male or mixed gender samples have been studied. Forty-six patients with schizophrenia (23 femal...

Sequelae of acquired brain injury endanger the realisation of important life-goals. Discrepancies arise between the importance attached to a goal and the success in realising it. This study investigates goal discrepancies and their influence on patients' subjective well-being (SWB) in different rehabilitation stages. Life-goals, SWB and daily funct...

Compulsive hoarding, characterized by the acquisition of and failure to discard a large number of possessions, is increasingly recognized as a significant public health burden. Many facets of the phenomenology, including an understanding of the population prevalence and associated features, are not yet fully understood. There is growing evidence th...

Acquired brain injury (ABI) does not only result in physical and cognitive impairments, but may also entail behavioral-emotional difficulties and mental disorders. Although neuropsychological approaches target the rehabilitation of cognitive deficits, the treatment of emotional and behavioral sequelae has received less consideration. This review ar...

Sequelae of acquired brain injury (ABI) require adjustment processes in which survivors must strive to regain subjective well-being (SWB) in the face of chronic impairment. The current study investigates whether the self-concept of achievement mediates this process. Thirty-five post-acute patients with ABI were assessed neuropsychologically for per...

The aim of this study was to estimate the prevalence of compulsive buying and its association with sociodemographic characteristics and depressive symptoms in a nationally representative sample of the German population using the validated German version of the Compulsive Buying Scale (CBS; Faber and O'Guinn, 1992) in order to have a direct comparis...

Previous research has documented high trait cognitive self-consciousness (CSC) in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). It remains unclear whether elevated CSC levels can also explain cognitive performance deficits that have frequently been found in OCD. This study examined whether experimentally heightened CSC affects visual memory performance in O...

The assumption that a low sense of self-worth can give rise to paranoid delusions is relevant from a therapeutic perspective, but research has been inconsistent. The present study sought to investigate how interpersonal self-concepts and global self-worth relate to psychotic and depressive psychopathology in persons with psychosis. Participants wit...

ZusammenfassungNach einer Hirnschädigung leiden viele Patienten unter anhaltenden kognitiven und emotional-motivationalen Störungen. Etwa die Hälfte aller hirnverletzten Personen entwickelt nach der Schädigung, häufig im 1. Jahr danach, eine psychische Störung, von der eine erhebliche Gefährdung des psychosozialen Funktionsniveaus und des weiteren...

Objective: To identify subjective importance, attainability and success of life goals and their predictive value for subjective well-being in patients with acquired brain injury. Design: Cross-sectional, descriptive. Setting: Two inpatient neurological rehabilitation centres. Participants: Patients with non-progressive neurological disorders. Inter...

Negative self-concepts relate to increased depressive symptoms and psychosocial burden and reduced quality of life, which underlines their importance in rehabilitation processes. Changes in self-concept in 59 inpatients and 29 post-acute outpatients with acquired brain injury were examined. Compared to premorbid appraisals, both samples evaluate po...

Zusammenfassung. Erworbene Hirnschädigungen können neben akuten Beeinträchtigungen durch eine Fülle von langwierigen Krank-heitsfolgen gekennzeichnet sein. Diese sind interindividuell sehr verschieden und stehen in einem engen Bezug zu klinischen Variablen, zum prämorbiden Status der Betroffenen und zur Unterstützung nach dem Schädigungseintritt. E...

Die Psychotherapie als wissenschaftlich begründete Behandlungsmethode befindet sich in einer rasanten Weiterentwicklung. Für immer neue psychische und psychosomatische Behandlungsfelder kann belegt werden, dass Psychotherapie wirkungsvoll ist und eine wichtige Behandlungsmaßnahme darstellt. Neue Leitfäden zum Durchführen von Psychotherapie wurden e...

It has long been known that patients with depression show neuropsychological symptoms. A great number of studies aimed at an exact characterization of these symptoms. Scientifically, the knowledge about such a profile was thought to provide information about neurobiological dysfunctions. Clinically, this knowledge would be useful to differentiate d...

Persons with persecutory delusions display a deviant attributional style, assumed to represent an exaggerated self-serving bias relevant to delusion formation. However, recent studies question the proposed self-serving and predisposing nature and call for alternative explanations. This study compared attributions in participants with either acute p...

Theoretical models of persecutory delusions have emphasized the impact of reasoning biases and negative emotion at the early stages of symptom formation. However, the causal mechanisms remain unclear. This study tests the hypothesis that state anxiety will increase paranoid ideation and that this increase will be moderated by the level of individua...

Major depression is a heterogeneous disorder. Biological markers and cognitive tasks have been employed to distinguish clinical subtypes but results have been inconclusive. The current study assessed implicit learning with the Serial Reaction Time Task (SRTT) known to be sensitive to frontostriatal dysfunctions and regional brain volumes of the ant...