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Introduction
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Publications
Publications (156)
Background Social anxiety is a heightened fear and discomfort in social situations. Cases of elevated distress and impaired functioning can lead to a clinical diagnosis of social anxiety disorder. Altering cognitive biases associated with social anxiety has been suggested as potentially beneficial; however, little is known about the comparative eff...
Background:Structured diagnostic interviews are essential in clinical psychological diagnostics due to their robust psychometric properties. Despite their significance, patient and interviewer acceptance assessment during structured diagnostic interviews is infrequent. Within the domain of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the Clinician-Adminis...
Interpretation biases (IBs) play a central role in cognitive models of anxiety disorders and are considered a transdiagnostic feature across anxiety disorders and severity levels. However, the magnitude of this bias in anxiety and modulating factors are largely unknown. This three-level meta-analysis investigated the associations between IBs and sy...
Involuntary memories are thought to affect emotion, cognition, and behaviour, and it is often assumed that their impact is amplified when they are rich in mental imagery. However, this assumption has yet to be directly investigated. The current study tested a newly-developed paradigm designed to induce involuntary memories and provide a means to te...
The vividness with which people can imagine positive events happening in their future has been linked to a number of different aspects of psychopathology and wellbeing. These relationships are hypothesised to arise from the role of mental imagery in thinking about the future and its close links to emotion. The current research investigated the asso...
Exposure is highly effective for treating acrophobia and there is growing consensus that cognitive mechanisms play an important role in exposure-based therapies. The present randomized controlled trial investigated whether adding a Cognitive Bias Modification - Interpretation (CBM-I) training to a single-session exposure therapy further facilitates...
Background: Steroid hormone dysregulations have frequently been implicated in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) pathogenesis. However, the translation into naturalistic clinical settings as markers of symptomatology and treatment success remains complex. Particularly, there is little longitudinal data on steroid secretion over the course of inte...
While Open Science practices are highly desirable to advance the credibility and accessibility of knowledge gained through research, they are not as common in clinical psychology as many might hope. This paper presents an overview of how to implement Open Science procedures in clinical psychology and psychotherapy research. We will address frequent...
Introduction
Intrusive memories occur frequently after potentially traumatic events and form a core symptom of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) if they persist. The translational approach of visuospatial interventions tries to target those intrusive memories in order to reduce their frequency predominantly using an intervention including as one...
Open science practices are gaining increasing importance. However, applying open science practices in one's research can be challenging. And yet, it is becoming increasingly necessary to take a stance on this. To support our colleagues in clinical psychology to take a stance on open science practices and to motivate them to apply these practices in...
Anhedonia, the loss of interest in and pleasure from previously enjoyable activities is a core symptom of depression and presents a major challenge to treatments. Interventions involving positive mental imagery generation have been suggested to reduce anhedonia. However, it is not clear whether the imagery component of such interventions is crucial...
Background Social anxiety is a heightened fear and discomfort in social situations which can be experienced in varying degrees of severity. Cases of elevated distress and impaired functioning and quality of life can lead to a clinical diagnosis of social anxiety disorder. Altering cognitive biases associated with social anxiety has been suggested a...
Intermittent theta burst stimulation (iTBS), a variant of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), is an established treatment for adults with major depressive disorder (MDD). Due to its favorable safety profile, iTBS is also a promising early intervention in the transition phase from adolescence to early adulthood, but this has not bee...
Anhedonia, or a deficit in the liking, wanting, and seeking of rewards, is typically assessed via self-reported "in-the-moment" emotional and motivational responses to reward stimuli and activities. Given that mental imagery is known to evoke emotion and motivational responses, we conducted two studies to investigate the relationship between mental...
Sequential Bayesian analyses have been suggested as a means for efficient hypothesis-testing within psychology, often substantially reducing the sample sizes required. In the context of clinical psychology, trial designs using sequential Bayesian analyses have been proposed as a way to accelerate psychological treatment development. However, a focu...
The health burden posed by depression and difficulty accessing effective treatments has led to increased interest in simple internet-delivered cognitive training programs as potential low-intensity, inexpensive and scalable interventions. One such candidate intervention, positive imagery cognitive bias modification (imagery CBM) involves repeated r...
When evaluating the effect of psychological treatments on a dichotomous outcome variable in a randomized controlled trial (RCT), covariate adjustment using logistic regression models is often applied. In the presence of covariates, average marginal effects (AMEs) are often preferred over odds ratios, as AMEs yield a clearer substantive and causal i...
The vividness with which people can imagine positive events happening in their future has been linked to a number of different aspects of psychopathology and wellbeing. These relationships are hypothesised to arise from the role of mental imagery in thinking about the future and its close links to emotion. The current research investigated the asso...
Chronic pain is common and debilitating, and recommended treatments are only moderately effective for pain relief. Focus has shifted to refining targets for change within psychological therapy to improve pain management. Evidence has shown the role of intrusive images in many psychological disorders. However, only a few studies have advanced our kn...
Background: While available posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) treatments are generally successful, 30-40% of patients show limited improvement. The endocannabinoid system may play a role in the aftermath of trauma, in PTSD, and in extinction processes. Therefore, this secondary analysis of a randomized-controlled trial including PTSD inpatients...
Steroid hormone dysregulations have frequently been implicated in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) pathogenesis. However, the translation into naturalistic clinical settings as markers of symptomatology and treatment success remains complex. Particularly, there is little longitudinal data on steroid secretion over the course of interventions. T...
Purpose
Chronic pain is a highly prevalent and distressing condition with limited treatment efficacy. Prior research reports associations between the experience of mental imagery about chronic pain and pain itself, particularly in those with anxiety and depression. However, many aspects of these associations remain unexplored. A better understandin...
We comment on the papers by Schönbrodt et al. (2022) and Gärtner et al. (2022) on responsible research assessment from the perspective of clinical psychology and psychotherapy research. Schönbrodt et al. (2022) propose four principles to guide hiring and promotion in psychology: (1) In addition to publications in scientific journals, data sets and...
We comment on the papers by Schönbrodt et al. (2022) and Gärtner et al. (2022) on responsible research assessment from the perspective of clinical psychology and psychotherapy research. Schönbrodt et al. (2022) propose four principles to guide hiring and promotion in psychology: (1) In addition to publications in scientific journals, data sets and...
Background
The Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS-5) is a structured diagnostic interview developed for diagnosing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). To ensure compliance with PTSD inclusion criteria, an initial study investigated the psychometric properties and factorial structure of the German version of CAPS-5 using data collected previ...
Background
Mentally-generated soothing imagery is a therapeutic technique to support mental wellbeing, but some individuals may require support using externally presented stimuli. Project Soothe was launched to collect soothing images using a citizen science approach. This online pilot study evaluated the first 575 soothing images collected, examin...
The route for the development, evaluation and dissemination of personalized psychological therapies is complex and challenging. In particular, the large sample sizes needed to provide adequately powered trials of newly-developed personalization approaches means that the traditional treatment development route is extremely inefficient. This paper ou...
Background
Depressive symptoms are associated with negative expectations and reduced belief updating by positive information. Cognitive immunization, the devaluation of positive information, has been argued to be central in this relationship and predictive processing models suggest that more positive information is associated with greater cognitive...
Most people experience positive involuntary mental imagery (IMI) frequently in daily life, and this imagery is thought to play important functional roles. However, evidence for the importance and effects of positive IMI is largely indirect. The current study adapted a paradigm previously used to induce IMI in the lab with the aim of investigating w...
Anhedonia, the loss of interest in and pleasure from previously enjoyable activities, is a core symptom of depression and presents a major challenge to treatments. Interventions involving positive mental imagery generation have been suggested to reduce anhedonia. However, it is not clear whether the imagery component of such interventions is crucia...
Interpretation biases (IBs) play a central role in cognitive models of anxiety disorders and are considered a transdiagnostic feature operating across anxiety disorder categories and lev-els of severity. Despite decades of research, the magnitude of this bias in anxiety as well as the factors modulating its magnitude are largely unknown. This artic...
Interpretation biases (IBs) play a central role in cognitive models of anxiety disorders and are considered a transdiagnostic feature operating across anxiety disorder categories and lev-els of severity. Despite decades of research, the magnitude of this bias in anxiety as well as the factors modulating its magnitude are largely unknown. This artic...
Mental health problems amongst university students pose a major public health challenge, and this is particularly the case in Pakistan. Alongside broader societal and cultural pressures, cognitive factors likely also play a role in the development of and resilience to mental health problems and may provide a feasible target for interventions. The c...
Background:
Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a highly prevalent psychiatric condition associated with significant disability, mortality and economic burden. A large proportion of MDD patients are treated in primary health care in the local community. Attentional Bias Modification (ABM) training in combination with antidepressants could be an eff...
Most people experience involuntary memories frequently in daily life, and these are thought to play important functional roles. Interestingly, people can experience involuntary memories not only of events they have actually experienced, but also of scenarios they have only imagined. However, this latter phenomenon, and the factors that influence wh...
Background: The Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS-5) is a structured diagnostic interview developed to diagnose post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) based on the criteria of the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. A first study investigating the psychometric properties and factorial structure of the Ge...
Background
According to major cognitive accounts of panic disorder, bodily sensations can lead to automatic activation of an associative fear network, potentially triggering a cascade of cognitive, emotional, and physiological responses culminating in a panic attack. However, the evidence for the automatic associations assumed by these models is mi...
Background: Mentally-generated soothing imagery is a therapeutic technique to support mental wellbeing, but some individuals may require support using externally presented stimuli. Project Soothe was launched to collect soothing images using a citizen science approach. This online pilot study evaluated the first 575 soothing images collected, exami...
Background: Depressive symptoms are associated with negative expectations and reduced belief updating by positive information. Cognitive immunization, the devaluation of positive information, has been argued to be central in this relationship and predictive processing models suggest that more positive information is associated with greater cognitiv...
We comment on the papers by Schönbrodt et al. (2022) and Gärtner et al. (2022) on responsible research assessment from the perspective of clinical psychology and psychotherapy research.
Mental imagery can provide a particularly effective means to affect emotions, cognitions, and behaviour, and has long been used within psychological therapies for this purpose. This chapter explores the relationships between mental imagery and interpretational processing biases, including how mental imagery can be used to change these biases. It st...
Background: According to major cognitive accounts of panic disorder, bodily sensations can lead to automatic activation of an associative fear network, potentially triggering a cascade of cognitive, emotional, and physiological responses culminating in a panic attack. However, the evidence for the automatic associations assumed by these models is m...
Involuntary memories are thought to affect emotion, cognition, and behaviour, and it is often assumed that their impact is amplified by the fact that they tend to be rich in mental imagery. However, this assumption has not been subject to direct experimental investigation. The current study tested a newly-developed paradigm designed to induce invol...
Background
Interpretation biases (IBs) are central in panic disorder, and there is rich evidence showing that these are correlated with and predictive of panic-relevant symptomatology. However, experimental studies are needed to examine the potential causal effects of IBs, as predicted by cognitive models.
Methods
Panic-related IBs were manipulate...
Background
The scale of the global mental health burden indicates the inadequacy not only of current treatment options, but also the pace of the standard treatment development process. The ‘leapfrog’ trial design is a newly-developed simple Bayesian adaptive trial design with potential to accelerate treatment development. A first leapfrog trial was...
Background: Interpretation biases (IBs) are central in panic disorder (PD), and there is a great body of evidence showing that these are correlated with and predictive of panic-relevant symptomatology. However, experimental studies are needed to examine the potential causal effects of IBs on symptoms of PD predicted by cognitive models.Methods: Pan...
The Scrambled Sentences Task (SST) is a robust measure of interpretational processes in psychopathology. However, there is little evidence of its utility in measuring dysfunctional appraisals (DAs) of potentially traumatic events. We developed a novel SST for trauma-related DAs and examined its psychometric properties including convergent validity...
Objective: The scale of the global mental health burden indicates the inadequacy not only of current treatment options, but also the pace of the standard treatment development process. The ‘leapfrog’ trial design is a newly-developed simple Bayesian adaptive trial design with potential to accelerate treatment development. A first leapfrog trial was...
Background
Dysfunctional appraisals are a key mechanism in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Experimental manipulations of appraisals via Cognitive Bias Modification-Appraisal (CBM-App) training targeting cognitions related to the ‘self’ has shown to affect analog trauma symptoms. The present study aimed to conceptually replicate and extend pre...
The Scrambled Sentences Task (SST) is frequently used to assess interpretation biases (IBs). However, neither the range of its applications nor the quality of the empirical evidence it provides has been systematically examined. This systematic review investigates the types of samples and disorders in which the SST has been applied and evaluates its...
One important aim of experimental psychopathology research is to inform development of new interventions derived from basic science. However, testing whether a newly developed intervention is in fact effective requires moving from experimental studies to clinical trials, and this transition can pose many problems. These problems stem not only from...
Convergent evidence supports a crucial role for dysfunctional appraisals in the development and maintenance of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, most research in this area has used self-report measures, assessing only explicit forms of such negative cognitions; the relevance of their more automatically-activated counterparts, as assum...
Background
Positive affect and anhedonia are important but challenging targets for mental health treatments. Previous research indicates the potential of a computerised cognitive training paradigm involving generation of positive mental imagery, termed positive mental imagery training (PMIT), to increase positive affect and reduce anhedonia.
Aims...
Background
Treatment innovation for depressive symptoms in adolescence is urgently needed. Adult research suggests interventions targeting underlying cognitive mechanisms, such as dysfunctional mental imagery and overgeneral memory, are promising. Here, we describe and evaluate in a case series a brief imagery-based intervention for depressive symp...
One important aim of experimental psychopathology research is to inform development of new interventions derived from basic science. However, testing whether a newly developed intervention is in fact effective requires moving from experimental studies to clinical trials, and this transition can pose many problems. These problems stem not only from...
Objective: Mental health problems amongst university students pose a major public health challenge, and is particularly the case in Pakistan. Alongside broader societal and cultural pressures, cognitive factors likely also play a role in the development of and resilience to mental health problems and may provide a feasible target for interventions....
Theoretical models emphasize the role of both automatic appraisals (i.e., associations) and conscious appraisals (i.e., interpretations) for sexual desire. Studies on sexuality-related appraisals have not combined self-report measures and experimental paradigms in order to compare the relevance of associations or interpretations. The aim of this st...
The Scrambled Sentences Task (SST) is a robust measure of interpretational processes in psychopathology. However, there is little evidence of its utility as a measure of dysfunctional appraisals (DAs) in relation to traumatic or negative life events. We therefore developed a novel SST in the context of trauma and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD...
Objectives
Evidence for a genetic influence on psychological treatment outcome so far has been inconsistent, likely due to the focus on candidate genes and the heterogeneity of the disorders treated. Using polygenic risk scores (PRS) in homogenous patient samples may increase the chance of detecting genetic influences.
Methods
A sample of 342 phob...
The Scrambled Sentences Task (SST) is frequently used to assess interpretation biases
(IBs). However, neither the range of its applications nor the quality of the empirical evidence
it provides has been systematically examined. This systematic review investigates the types of
samples and disorders in which the SST has been applied and evaluates its...
Background: Positive affect and anhedonia are important but challenging targets for mental health treatments. Previous research indicates the potential of a computerized cognitive training paradigm involving generation of positive mental imagery, here termed positive mental imagery training (PMIT), to increase positive affect and reduce anhedonia....
Psychological disorders such as major depressive disorder are characterised by interpersonal difficulties and anhedonia. A cognitive mechanism proposed to contribute to the maintenance of these problems is a diminished ability to generate positive mental imagery, especially regarding social interactions. The current study examined whether the effec...
Brief, evidence-based interventions for adolescent depression are urgently required, particularly for school-settings. Cognitive mechanisms research suggests dysfunctional mental imagery and overgeneral memory could be promising targets to improve mood. This feasibility randomised controlled trial with parallel symptomatic groups (n=56) compared a...
Background: Dysfunctional appraisals are a key mechanism in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Experimental manipulations of appraisals via Cognitive Bias Modification-Appraisal (CBM-App) training targeting cognitions related to the ‘self’ has shown to affect analog trauma symptoms. The present study aimed to conceptually replicate and extend pr...
Introduction:
Dysfunctional appraisals about traumatic events and their sequelae are a key mechanism in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Experimental studies have shown that a computerized cognitive training, cognitive bias modification for appraisals (CBM-APP), can modify dysfunctional appraisals and reduce analogue trauma symptoms amongst h...
The early development of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) can be characterized by the coming together of behavioral and cognitive traditions. However, the past decades have arguably seen more divergences than convergences within the field. The 9 th World Congress of Behavioural and Cognitive Therapies was held in Berlin in July 2019 with the congre...
Mental imagery has a long history in the science and practice of cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT), stemming from both behavioural and cognitive traditions. The past decade or so has seen a marked increase in both scientific and clinical interest in mental imagery, from basic questions about the processes underpinning mental imagery and its roles i...
Mental imagery has become a “hot topic” in psychology and cognitive neuroscience over the past decade. Mental images are sensory events that happen inside one's mind without a corresponding current stimulus coming from the outside world. We can “see with the mind's eye”, “hear with the mind's ear” and so on. In this article we first describe the im...
ABSTRACT Positive involuntary mental imagery occurs frequently in daily life but evidence as to its functions and importance is largely indirect. The current study investigated a method to induce positive involuntary imagery in daily life, which would allow direct testing of its impact. An unselected student sample (N = 80) completed a single sessi...
Theoretical models of sexual desire emphasize the role of cognitive processes. Empirical results, however, are mostly based on self-report measures. This study used three indirect measures to assess sexuality-related associations (via a Single Target Implicit Association Test; STIAT), and sexuality-related interpretations (via a Scrambled Sentences...
The human imagination manifests in countless different forms. We imagine the possible and the impossible. How do we do this so effortlessly? Why did the capacity for imagination evolve and manifest with undeniably manifold complexity uniquely in human beings? This handbook reflects on such questions by collecting perspectives on imagination from lea...
Background
Even in cases with complexity, simple techniques can be useful to target a specific symptom. Intrusive mental images are highly disruptive, drive emotion, and contribute to maintaining psychopathology. Cognitive science suggests that we might target intrusive images using competing tasks.
Aims
We describe an imagery competing task techn...
Introduction: The aim of this study is to investigate the diagnostic accuracy, psychometric properties, and clinical utility of the German version of the clinician-administered post-traumatic stress disorder scale for DSM-5 (CAPS-5) in routine clinical settings.
Methods and analysis: This study is a non-interventional, multitrait-multimethod design...
Reducing the health burden of depression and anxiety disorders requires improvement in both treatment outcomes and the accessibility of treatment approaches. Interventions based on cognitive bias modification (CBM) have been suggested as one promising way to achieve these aims. CBM uses simple computerised cognitive training procedures to target bi...
Depression is highly prevalent among university students in Pakistan, but treatment provision is inadequate. Computerized interventions may provide one means of overcoming treatment barriers. The present study piloted a computerized cognitive training paradigm involving repeated generation of positive mental imagery, imagery cognitive bias modifica...
Both observational research and theoretical accounts suggest that positive involuntary mental imagery is experienced frequently in daily life and has several important functions, for example in emotion regulation, planning, decision-making, and goal-directed behavior. However, there is in fact little direct evidence to support claims made about its...
Background and objectives:
Adopting an upright (vs. stooped) posture has been related to positive effects on emotional and cognitive processes. However, there is no evidence concerning the effect of posture on two key processes associated with the maintenance of depression: interpretation bias and vividness of mental imagery. The objectives were t...
Depression is highly prevalent amongst university students in Pakistan but treatment provision is inadequate. Computerized interventions may provide one means of overcoming treatment barriers. The present study piloted a computerized cognitive training paradigm involving repeated generation of positive mental imagery, imagery Cognitive Bias Modific...
The application of basic science research to the development and optimization of psychological treatments holds great potential. However, this process of clinical translation is challenging and time-consuming, and the standard route by which it proceeds is inefficient. Adaptive rolling designs, which originated within cancer treatment research, pro...
This study investigates mental health, access to treatment, suicidality, and bullying among Pakistani university students. Data were collected from a sample of 355 university students in Pakistan. For reference, we compared these data to a sample previously collected from German and Chinese students. Results indicated relatively poorer mental healt...
Convergent evidence supports a crucial role for dysfunctional appraisals in the development and maintenance of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, most research in this area has used self-report measures, assessing only explicit forms of such negative cognitions; the relevance of their more automatically-activated counterparts, as assum...
Cognitive factors play an important role in the etiology and maintenance of sexual difficulties. To date, research has mostly relied on self-report measures to assess negative cognitions related to low sexual function. To overcome the limitations of self-report questionnaires, a series of open-ended, ambiguous sexual scenarios were developed and pr...
Dysfunctional appraisals play a key role in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The present study investigated a novel method to assess dysfunctional appraisals via an online study, in which participants (N = 93) were asked to specify a distressing, negative life event and were then presented with ambiguous, open-ended trauma-related scenarios. P...
Objective:
The experience of intrusive memories is a core clinical symptom of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and can be distressing in its own right. Notions of dual task interference and reconsolidation-update mechanisms suggest novel approaches to target intrusive memories. This study tested the hypothesis that a single-session cognitive...
Objective:
The core clinical feature of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is recurrent intrusive memories of trauma. This study aimed to test a novel and simple intervention, inspired by the concepts of concurrent task interference and memory reconsolidation, to reduce the occurrence of intrusive memories among inpatients with complex PTSD.
Me...
Cognitive factors play an important role in the etiology and maintenance of sexual difficulties. To date, research has mostly relied on self-report measures to assess negative cognitions related to low sexual function. To overcome the limitations of self-report questionnaires, a series of open-ended, ambiguous sexual scenarios was developed and pre...
Objectives
Depression, which is common following acquired brain injury (ABI), has been shown to predict cognitive impairment, rehabilitation outcome, and quality of life. Whilst many studies have examined links between depression and cognitive–affective processing in the non‐ABI population, their applicability to this important clinical group, wher...
The application of basic science research to the development and optimization of psychological treatments holds great potential. However, this process of clinical translation is challenging and time-consuming, and the standard route by which it proceeds is inefficient. Adaptive rolling designs, which originated within cancer treatment research, pro...
Background
Enhancing the capacity to experience positive affect could help improve recovery across a range of areas of mental health. Experimental psychopathology research indicates that a computerized cognitive training paradigm involving generation of positive mental imagery can increase state positive affect, and more recent clinical studies hav...
Background:
Despite the global impact of bipolar disorder (BD), treatment success is limited. Challenges include syndromal and subsyndromal mood instability, comorbid anxiety, and uncertainty around mechanisms to target. The Oxford Mood Action Psychology Programme (OxMAPP) offered a novel approach within a cognitive behavioural framework, via ment...
Background
Adolescent depression is common and impairing. There is an urgent need to develop early interventions to prevent depression becoming entrenched. However, current psychological interventions are difficult to access and show limited evidence of effectiveness. Schools offer a promising setting to enhance access to interventions, including r...
