
Desirèe ColomboJaume I University | UJI
Desirèe Colombo
PhD
About
48
Publications
27,128
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Introduction
Desirée Colombo currently works between Jaume I University, Spain, and Vrije University, Netherlands.
Her main research interests concern the use of new technologies as effective tools in the psychological and neuropsychological field, with a main focus on the use of ecological momentary assessment and virtual reality to explore affective and cognitive dynamics.
Skills and Expertise
Publications
Publications (48)
Background
There has been an increased interest in understanding social anxiety (SA) and SA disorder (SAD) antecedents and consequences as they occur in real time, resulting in a proliferation of studies using ambulatory assessment (AA). Despite the exponential growth of research in this area, these studies have not been synthesized yet.
Objective...
When it comes to coping with stress, positive emotion upregulation is of utmost importance. Positive emotions have been suggested to be an important resource during stressful times since people try to create and upregulate pleasant emotional states when feeling stressed. Accordingly, individual differences in the ability to generate and savor posit...
So far, there is evidence showing that the use of specific emotion regulation strategies in response to negatively-valenced stimuli shapes the way people subsequently remember them. However, still little is known about the potential effects of savouring positive events on the associated memories. The aim of the current study was to test whether upr...
Objectives
When facing daily negative events, people implement different strategies to regulate ongoing emotions. While the literature suggests that the emotional correlates of an event (i.e., valence and arousal) are linked to the characteristics of its memory, the role of acceptance as an emotion regulation strategy (i.e., an open attitude toward...
Research suggests that optimism is positively related to emotional wellbeing. However, little is known about the emotion regulation mechanisms that potentially explain (i.e., mediate) this relationship. The present study was designed to address this issue. To this end, it examined emotion regulation strategies (i.e., appreciation, rumi-nation, prob...
BACKGROUND
There has been an increased interest in understanding social anxiety (SA) and social anxiety disorder (SAD) antecedents and consequences as they occur in real-time, resulting in a proliferation of studies utilizing ambulatory assessment (AA). Despite the exponential growth of research in this area, these studies have not been synthesized...
The present study aimed at (1) identifying the emotion regulation processes that can explain the trait hedonism positive emotions relationship, and (2) determining whether this relationship varies according to which part of the distribution of positive emotions is considered. To this end, the intensity of the positive emotions felt by 84 adult part...
For many years, emotion regulation has been regarded as an intrapersonal process. Nonetheless, a growing body of evidence has outlined the importance of the social context in which the emotions are regulated, giving rise to the concept of interpersonal emotion regulation (IER). In line with the studies supporting the role of contextual and momentar...
Behavioral activation (BA) is a structured psychotherapeutic approach for the treatment of major depressive disorder (MDD), which aims at increasing the engagement in activities that might bring enjoyment and meaning to patients' lives. Although a growing body of evidence supports the effectiveness of BA, enhancing the motivation and activity level...
Over the last years, Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) emerged as an alternative data collection strategy to repeatedly assess people in real-life, thus improving the ecological validity and reliability of data. As a matter of fact, the increasing field of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and the growing availability of smartpho...
Emotion regulation has emerged as one of the most researched topics in clinical psychology over the last years. But what does differentiate emotion regulation from other important constructs? Furthermore, what do digital technologies can add to the understanding and delivery of clinical interventions? Considering that alongside other regulatory pro...
Background
For many years, biofeedback and neurofeedback have been implemented in the treatment of depression. However, the effectiveness of these techniques on depressive symptomatology is still controversial. Hence, we conducted a meta-analysis of studies extracted from PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science and Embase.
Methods
Two different strings wer...
When facing a negative event, people implement different strategies to regulate ongoing emotions. Although the previous literature has suggested that the emotional intensity of a negative episode is associated with the characteristics of the subsequent autobiographical memory, it is still unknown whether emotion regulation (ER) moderates this relat...
In recent decades, a growing body of literature has focused on emotion regulation (ER), which refers to the ability to implement strategies in order to modulate emotional responses and reach desirable goals. To date, impaired ER (i.e., emotion dysregulation) has been identified as a transdiagnostic factor across a wide range of psychopathological c...
So far, several aspects of autobiographical memory (AM) have been found to be impaired in depression. Among others, depressed patients show the tendency to recall more negative than positive events (i.e., negative bias) and usually retrieve memories that lack of specificity and details (i.e., overgeneral memories). Based on this, we designed an AM...
According to a long tradition of research, people are used to mentally time
travel: That is, to recreate memories from the past and envision future scenarios. To
date, a growing body of evidence has revealed that people’s estimations about past
and future emotional states are inaccurate. Nevertheless, the mechanisms underlying
these biases are stil...
A growing body of research has investigated the regulation of negative emotions in ecological settings, but little is known about the mechanisms underlying positive emotion regulation in everyday life. Although some evidence suggests that adopting positive strategies is beneficial for emotional well-being, the literature is inconsistent about the e...
Background
According to a growing body of literature, people are quite inaccurate in recalling past affective experiences. Nevertheless, the mechanism underlying this recall bias (i.e., the tendency to overestimate and/or underestimate positive or negative past emotional experiences) remains unclear, and its association with mental health has not b...
For many years, biofeedback and neurofeedback have been implemented in the treatment of depression. However, the effectiveness of these techniques on depressive symptomatology is still controversial. Hence, we conducted a meta-analysis of studies extracted from PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science and Embase. Two different strings were considered for eac...
According to a growing body of studies, people’s ability to forecast future emotional experiences is generally biased. Nonetheless, the existing literature has mainly explored affective forecasting in relation to specific events, whereas little is still known about the ability to make general estimations of future emotional states. Based on existin...
It is noted that the perceptual experience of body and space can be modulated by changing the action capabilities or by manipulating the perceived body dimensions through a multisensory stimulation. This study adds to pre-existing literature by investigating the alterations in bodily experience following embodiment to both enlarged and shrunked bod...
In recent decades, emotion regulation (ER) has been one of the most widely studied constructs within the psychological field. Nevertheless, laboratory experiments and retrospective assessments have been the 2 most common strands of ER research; thus, leaving open several crucial questions about ER antecedents and consequences in daily life. Beyond...
The emerging fields of predictive and precision medicine are changing the traditional medical approach to disease and patient. Current discoveries in medicine enable to deepen the comprehension of diseases, whereas the adoption of high-quality methods such as novel imaging techniques (e.g. MRI, PET) and computational approaches (i.e. machine learni...
Virtual Reality (VR) Therapy has emerged in the 90s as an appealing way of delivering exposure treatment. Throughout these years, ample evidence has been published. Although there is an agreed consensus regarding its efficacy, currently a quick shift in the field is being experienced, especially due to the advent of off-the-shelf technology that is...
Traditional clinical and research assessments rely on retrospective questionnaires, that ask individuals to retrospectively summarize how they felt during the last period. Nevertheless, people are not accurate at recalling past experiences without altering the content, especially when they are required to report their affect. In this study, we adop...
In the last decades, emotion regulation (ER) received increasing attention and became one of the most studied topics within the psychological field. Nevertheless, this construct has not been fully updated with the latest technological advancements. In this perspective, we will show how diverse technologies, such as virtual reality (VR), wearable bi...
The use of technology-based Ecological Momentary Assessments (EMAs) allows to repeatedly assess patients during daily life, in naturalistic settings and in precise moments of the day. To date, EMAs have been broadly adopted for the investigation of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). Nevertheless, adherence still represents a clinical challenge, as de...
Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) and ecological momentary intervention (EMI) are alternative approaches to retrospective self-reports and face-to-face treatments, and they make it possible to repeatedly assess patients in naturalistic settings and extend psychological support into real life. The increase in smartphone applications and the avai...
Spatial cognition is an umbrella term used to refer to the complex set of abilities necessary to encode, categorize, and use spatial information from the surrounding environment to move effectively and orient within it. Experimental studies indicate that the cerebellum belongs to the neural network involved in spatial cognition, although its exact...
The goal of this study was to provide reliable quantitative analyses of psycho-physiological measures during acute mental stress. Acute, time-limited stressors are used extensively as experimental stimuli in psychophysiological research. In particular, the Stroop Color Word Task and the Arithmetical Task have been widely used in several settings as...
Ample evidence supports the use of Virtual Reality (VR) for anxiety disorders. Nonetheless, currently there is no evidence about moderators or potential negative effects of VR treatment strategies. An Individual Patient Data (IPD) approach was employed with 15 retrieved datasets. The current study sample was composed of 810 patients. Randomized con...
Background
Ecological momentary assessments (EMAs) and ecological momentary interventions (EMIs) represent a novel approach for the assessment and delivery of psychological support to depressed patients in daily life. Beyond the classical paper-and-pencil daily diaries, the more recent progresses in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)...
Background: Unilateral Spatial Neglect (USN) is traditionally assessed with paper-and-pencil tests or computer-based tests. Thanks to the wide-spreading of mobile devices, and the extensive capabilities that they have in dealing complex elements, it is possible to provide clinicians with tools for cognitive assessment. Contemporary 3D engine is, in...
We present the architecture and usability evaluation of virtual reality system—“Positive Bike”—designed for improving cognitive and motor conditions in frail elderly patients. The system consists of a cycle-ergometer integrated in an immersive virtual reality system (CAVE) which allows combining motor and cognitive exercises according to a “dual-ta...
La regulación emocional se ha convertido a lo largo de las últimas dos décadas en uno de los constructos más estudiados en el campo de la psicología clínica. En el presente artículo se exponen en una primera sección los conceptos primordiales en torno a los hallazgos psicopatológicos que dan cuenta del papel primordial de la regulación emocional co...
A growing body of evidence pointed out that a decline in effectively using spatial reference frames for categorizing information occurs both in normal and pathological aging. Moreover, it is also known that executive deficits primarily characterize the cognitive profile of older individuals. Acknowledging this literature, the current study was aime...
Gemischte Realitäten (engl. Mixed Realities, MR) und Serious Games (SG) stellen zwei Ausprägungen jener technologischen Entwicklungen dar, die aktuell das Feld der psychischen Gesundheit inklusive der Klinischen Psychologie und Psychotherapie maßgeblich verändern. Obgleich es eine Reihe von Gründen gibt, die den Einsatz dieser Technologien im Rahme...
BACKGROUND
Given the rise of internet-based treatments as an effective therapeutic tool for psychological disorders, it is necessary to carry out research that examines clients’ experiences with this type of intervention. The qualitative methodology has been found to be useful for analyzing clients’ perceptions in terms of facilitators and barriers...
Frailty is a new and interesting concept that describes a preclinical condition in which elderly are more vulnerable and the possibility to develop pathologies increases. Often, the physical decline is related to cognitive impairments: Subjects in this situation are defined as cognitive frail patients. The literature connected to this syndrome is g...
An early decline in navigation abilities is one of the first sign of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). More specifically, it has been suggested that allocentric impairments contribute significantly to this pathological decline. In this vein, the objective of the current work was to investigate the contribution of different spatial abilities involved in nav...
Emotion regulation (ER) is defined as the processes deployed by an individual or group of individuals to explicitly or implicitly influence the experienced emotions in order achieve desirable states or goals. The available literature within this domain has grown exponentially in the last years. Nevertheless, to the best of our knowledge no scientom...
Well-designed clinical trials are the gold standard for evidence-based research and for the assessment of the effectiveness of a clinical intervention. Methodological guidelines are available from various sources, such as textbook, funding applications and institutional guidelines. Nevertheless, a high number of published trials still lack methodol...
Previous evidence shows that combined cognitive and physical exercises (dual-task intervention, (I-DT)) potentiates cognitive performance more than either type of single training alone (Lauenroth et al., 2015). Here, we describe the rationale, the design and the implementation of the “Positive Bike”, a fully-immersive virtual reality biking experie...
Disasters can be very stressful events. However, computational models of stress require data that might be very difficult to collect during disasters. Moreover, personal experiences are not repeatable, so it is not possible to collect bottom-up information when building a coherent model. To overcome these problems, we propose the use of computation...
Aging affects many aspects of everyday living, such as autonomy, security and quality of life. Among all, spatial memory and spatial navigation show a gradual but noticeable decline, as a result of both neurobiological changes and the general slowing down of cognitive functioning. We conducted a systematic review using the Preferred Reporting Items...