About
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Introduction
Tom Smeets is a Full Professor of Clinical Psychology and Head of the Department of Medical and Clinical Psychology, Tilburg University. Tom's research interests include: Neurobiology of Learning and Memory; Stress, Trauma, & Psychopathology; Instrumental (Goal-directed vs. Habitual) Behavior; Overgeneralisation of Fear and Avoidant Safety Behaviours; Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
Additional affiliations
January 2019 - present
September 2008 - December 2013
January 2014 - December 2018
Publications
Publications (186)
Uncontrollable negative events yield increased stress responses compared to situations over which we have control. Previous studies have assessed the impact of uncontrollability of threat on stress reactivity. Less is known about whether and how acute stress exposure influences how we react to uncontrollable threats. Until now, research has primari...
This chapter reviews current research evidence for emotional biases in attention, memory, and interpretation in depression and anxiety, as well as how these biases influence each other to maintain negative information-processing. The chapter outlines how interacting information-processing biases may dysregulate affective and social-behavioral mecha...
Appetitive and aversive conditioning seemingly plays a role in the development and maintenance of various psychopathologies, including anxiety, mood, eating, and substance use disorders. However, studies on conditioning typically only study either appetitive or aversive conditioning in the context of psychopathology, and they are poorly integrated....
Climate anxiety is a phenomenon that is gaining importance due to the general public’s increased awareness of the worsening climate crisis. At present, climate anxiety is not operationalized consistently across the existing literature. It is important to gain more consensus on the definition and operationalization of climate anxiety to facilitate r...
Uncontrollable negative events yield increased stress responses compared to situations over which we have control. Previous studies have assessed the impact of uncontrollability of threat on stress reactivity. Less is known about whether and how acute stress exposure influences how we react to uncontrollable threats. Until now, research has primari...
Uncontrollable negative events yield increased stress responses compared to situations over which we have control. Previous studies have assessed the impact of uncontrollability of threat on stress reactivity. Less is known about whether and how acute stress exposure influences how we react to uncontrollable threats. Until now, research has primari...
Background
Modest inverse associations have been found between dairy intake, particularly yogurt, and type 2 diabetes risk. Investigating associations of dairy intake with early onset of type 2 diabetes offers opportunities for effective prevention of this condition.
Objectives
This study aims to investigate the relationships between the intake of...
Emotional Information-Processing Biases in Psychopathology
This chapter reviews current research evidence for emotional biases in attention, memory, and interpretation in depression and anxiety, as well as how these biases influence each other to maintain negative information-processing. The chapter outlines how interacting information-processing biases may dysregulate affective and social-behavioral mecha...
Tetris has been suggested to reduce intrusive memories and is being explored as a clinical intervention. However, the literature on the ‘Tetris effect’ has several shortcomings, which we aimed to address. We conducted a multi-site independent replication in healthy participants with a large sample size and detailed pre-registration. Experiment 1 (N...
Climate anxiety is a phenomenon that is gaining importance due to the general public's increased awareness of the worsening climate crisis. At present, climate anxiety is not operationalized consistently across the existing literature. It is important to gain more consensus on the definition and operationalization of climate anxiety to facilitate r...
Intrusive memories can be downregulated using intentional memory control, as measured via the Think/No-Think paradigm. In this task, participants retrieve or suppress memories in response to an associated reminder cue. After each suppression trial, participants rate whether the association intruded into awareness. Previous research has found that r...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751991824000019?dgcid=author
Our current understanding of the human stress response and its role in health, resilience, and (psycho)pathology stems largely from acute stress studies in controlled laboratory settings. Comparability of findings across these individual studies is comprised, as sample size are often small, between-individual variation in the stress response is lar...
Negative outlooks of our future may foster unwanted and intrusive thoughts. To some extent, individuals have control over their ability to suppress intrusions and downregulate their frequency. Acute stress impairs intentional suppression, leading to an increased frequency of intrusions. The aim of this study was to gain insight into the mechanism u...
Purpose
Patients with chronic painful chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN) may experience a negative impact of CIPN on daily life. They can use various coping (i.e., dealing with symptoms and resulting impairments in general) and self-management (i.e., practical actions to reduce symptoms) strategies to live with their limitations. Thi...
Purpose
A significant proportion of cancer patients suffer from chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN). This descriptive study aimed to examine patients’ experience of CIPN symptoms, daily limitations, involvement of healthcare professionals, and social support.
Methods
Cross-sectional data have been collected in the Netherlands via a n...
Research indicates that fear was an important factor in determining individual responses to COVID-19, predicting relevant behaviors such as compliance to preventive measures (e.g., hand washing) and stress reactions (e.g., poor sleep quality). Given this central role of fear, it is important to understand more about its temporal changes during the...
Background:
Around 30% of cancer survivors suffer from chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN) ≥6 months after completion of chemotherapy, which comes with limitations in daily functioning and worsened quality of life(QoL). Treatment options are scarce. Our aim was to develop an online self-help intervention based on Acceptance and Commi...
Background:
Investigating modifiable risk factors of early stages of the development of type 2 diabetes is essential for effective prevention. Some studies show protective associations between dairy and prediabetes, yet associations are heterogenous by type and fat content of dairy foods.
Objective:
To examine the relationship between the consum...
Intrusive memories can be downregulated using intentional memory control, as measured via the ‘Think/No-Think’ paradigm. In this task, participants retrieve or suppress memories in response to an associated reminder cue. After each suppression trial, participants rate whether the association had intruded into awareness. Using linear modelling, prev...
Instrumental learning is controlled by two distinct parallel systems: goal-directed (action-outcome) and habitual (stimulus-response) processes. Seminal research by Schwabe and Wolf (2009, 2010) has demonstrated that stress renders behavior more habitual by decreasing goal-directed control. More recent studies yielded equivocal evidence for a stres...
Background
Fear is an evolutionary adaptive emotion that serves to protect the organism from harm. Once a threat diminishes, fear should also dissipate as otherwise fear may become chronic and pathological. While actual threat of the COVID-19 pandemic (i.e., number of infections, hospitalizations, and deaths) has substantially varied over the cours...
This qualitative study investigated which types of interventions are made by group therapists during group cognitive–behavioral therapy (GCBT) with individuals who have perpetrated intimate partner violence (IPV) in the “Not ‘Losing It’ Anymore”(NLIA) outpatient programs across the Netherlands. Audio recordings of group sessions (N = 60) facilitate...
Background
About 30% of cancer survivors suffer from chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN) ≥6 months after completion of chemotherapy. This condition, for which treatment options are scarce, comes with limitations in daily life functioning and decreased quality of life. The current study examines the effectiveness of an online self-help...
Combining recall of an emotional memory with simultaneous horizontal eye movements (i.e., Recall + EM) reduces memory aversiveness. However, the long-term persistence of this effect is inconsistent across studies. Given that stress may aid in the consolidation of memories, we examined whether acute stress can boost the long-term effects of degraded...
Combining recall of an emotional memory with simultaneous horizontal eye movements (i.e., Recall+EM) reduces memory aversiveness. However, the long-term persistence of this effect is inconsistent across studies. Given that stress may aid in the consolidation of memories, we examined whether acute stress can boost the long-term effects of degraded m...
Vaccines are an important tool for governments and health agencies to contain and curb the Coronavirus Disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic. However, despite their effectiveness and safeness, a substantial portion of the population worldwide is hesitant to get vaccinated. In the current study, we examined whether fear of COVID-19 predicts vaccination wil...
Stress initiates a cascade of (neuro)biological, physiological, and behavioral changes, allowing us to respond to a challenging environment. The human response to acute stress can be studied in detail in controlled settings, usually in a laboratory environment. To this end, many studies employ acute stress paradigms to probe stress-related outcomes...
Purpose
Our aim was to investigate prospective associations of consumption of total dairy and dairy types with incident prediabetes in a Dutch population-based study.
Methods
Two enrolment waves of the Hoorn Studies were harmonized, resulting in an analytic sample of 2262 participants without (pre-) diabetes at enrolment (mean age 56 ± 7.3 years;...
Bulimia nervosa (BN) and binge eating disorder (BED) are characterized by episodes of eating large amounts of food while experiencing a loss of control. Recent studies suggest that the underlying causes of BN/BED consist of a complex system of environmental cues, atypical processing of food stimuli, altered behavioral responding, and structural/fun...
Evidence suggests neutral or moderately beneficial effects of dairy intake on type 2 diabetes mellitus risk. Nevertheless, evidence on associations with early phases of type 2 diabetes remains inconsistent. We aimed to examine associations between dairy-type intake with prediabetes risk and longitudinal insulin resistance. The analytic sample consi...
Vaccines are an important tool for governments and health agencies to contain and curb the Coronavirus Disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic. However, despite their effectiveness and safeness, a substantial portion of the population worldwide is hesitant to get vaccinated. In the current study, we examined whether fear of COVID-19 predicts vaccination wil...
Memories of the past can guide humans to avoid harm. The logical consequence of this is if memories are changed, avoidance behavior should be affected. More than 80 years of false memory research has shown that people’s memory can be re-constructed or distorted by receiving suggestive false feedback. The current study examined whether manipulating...
Acute stress is associated with a shift from goal-directed to habitual behavior. This stress-induced preference for habitual behavior has been suggested as a potential mechanism by which binge eating disorder (BED) patients succumb to eating large amounts of high-caloric foods in an uncontrolled manner (i.e., binge episodes). While in healthy subje...
Background
We systematically reviewed all literature concerning online Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) interventions for chronic pain to evaluate their (1) ACT content, (2) design characteristics, (3) design rationales, and (4) adherence.
Material and methods
A systematic search was performed on July 9th, 2020 in; PubMed, PsycINFO, CINAHL,...
Background
Acute stress is thought to reduce goal-directed behaviour, an effect purportedly associated with stress-induced release of catecholamines. In contrast, experimentally increased systemic catecholamine levels have been shown to increase goal-directed behaviour. Whether experimentally increased catecholamine function can modulate stress-ind...
Research has demonstrated the spreading of fear from threat-related stimuli to perceptually similar, but innocuous, stimuli. Less is known, however, about the generalization of avoidance behavior. Given that stress is known to affect learning and memory, we were interested in the effect of acute stress on (over)generalization of fear and avoidance...
Since the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), several reports have shown that fear relating to COVID-19 has sharply increased. To measure fear of COVID-19, various questionnaires have been developed in parallel. However, fear concerning COVID-19 is not necessarily a uniform construct and the different questionnaires may cover diverse as...
Research has demonstrated the spreading of fear from threat-related stimuli to perceptually similar, but innocuous, stimuli. Less is known, however, about the generalization of avoidance behavior. Given that stress is known to affect learning and memory, we were interested in the effect of acute stress on (over)generalization of fear and avoidance...
The COVID-19 pandemic has a substantial impact on mental health. Prior reports have shown that depression, anxiety, and stress have increased throughout the pandemic. Nonetheless, not everyone is affected by these negative consequences and some people may be relatively unaffected. In this online study in a predominantly Dutch and Belgian sample (N...
Background:
Reductions in memory practice effects have gained interest as risk factor for future cognitive decline. Practice effects vary with age and can be moderated by factors such as individual variability in arousal or stress experience acting as an additional cognitive load.
Objective:
In the current pilot study, we examined whether sympat...
In order to explain trauma resilience, previous research has been investigating possible risk and protective factors, both on an individual and a contextual level. In this experimental study, we examined narrative coherence and social support in relation to trauma resilience. Participants were asked to write about a turning point memory, after whic...
Approach-avoidance behaviours play a major role in the development and maintenance of anxiety disorders as repeated avoidance behaviours are assumed to prevent fear extinction. Approach-avoidance decisions (Conditioned Stimulus (CS)-avoidance and Unconditioned Stimulus (US)-avoidance) and their effect on fear extinction and renewal were investigate...
Acute stress has been found to impair the flexible updating of stimulus−outcome associations. However, there is a lack of studies investigating the effect of acute stress on the flexible updating of stimulus‐response associations, like active avoidance responses. The current study used an avoidance reversal learning paradigm to address this questio...
Anxiety patients often experience conflicts between approaching (pass barking dog) and avoiding (take detour) feared situations. In most experimental avoidance paradigms, response options are limited or forced, making it difficult to generalize the results to daily life situations. The aim of the present study was twofold: 1) to develop a more ecol...
Background
Fear is an evolutionary adaptive emotion that serves to protect the organism from harm. Once a threat diminishes, fear should also dissipate as otherwise fear may become chronic and pathological. While actual threat of the COVID-19 pandemic (i.e., number of infections, hospitalizations, and deaths) has substantially varied over the cours...
The COVID-19 pandemic has a substantial impact on mental health. Prior reports have shown that depression, anxiety, and stress have increased throughout the pandemic. Nonetheless, not everyone is affected by these negative consequences and some people may be relatively unaffected. In this online study in a predominantly Dutch and Belgian sample (N...
Background
Stress has both enhancing and impairing influences on memory performance. Interestingly, aging has been associated with changes in the stress system as well as a decline in memory performance. Reductions in memory practice effects have gained interest as a risk factor for future cognitive decline, yet research on how stress influences pr...
Since the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), several reports have shown that fear relating to COVID-19 has sharply increased. To measure fear of COVID-19, various questionnaires have been developed in parallel. However, fear concerning COVID-19 is not necessarily a uniform construct and the different questionnaires may cover diverse as...
Approach-avoidance behaviours play a major role in the development and maintenance of anxiety disorders as repeated avoidance behaviours are assumed to prevent fear extinction. Approach-avoidance decisions (Conditioned Stimulus (CS)-avoidance and Unconditioned Stimulus (US)-avoidance) and their effect on fear extinction and renewal were investigate...
Binging disorders are characterized by episodes of eating large amounts of food whilst experiencing a loss of control. Recent studies suggest that the underlying causes of these binging disorders consist of a complex system of environmental cues, different processing of food stimuli, altered behavioral responding, and brain changes. We propose that...
Being exposed to acute stress may cause people to behave more habitual, which purportedly is associated stress-induced increased dopamine release. In contrast, experimental rises in systemic dopamine levels have been shown to increase goal-directed behaviour and, thus, decrease habitual control. Whether experimentally increased dopamine functioning...
Instrumental learning is regulated by two memory systems: a relatively rigid but efficient habit system and a flexible but resource-demanding goal-directed system. Previous work has demonstrated that exposure to acute stress may shift the balance between these systems toward the habitual system. In the current study, we used a 2-day outcome devalua...
Memories can have consequences on people’s eating behavior. In the current
experiment, we examined the effect of belief versus recollection on food preferences
and then investigated whether explicit belief (i.e., self- reported) or implicit belief
(i.e., measured by an autobiographical implicit association test; aIAT) had a similar
effect on food p...
The 8th international meeting of the Integrated Brain and Behavior Research Center at the university of Haifa
Contextual learning pervades our perception and cognition and plays a critical role in adjusting to aversive and stressful events. Our ability to memorise spatial context has been studied extensively with the contextual cueing paradigm, in which participants search for targets among simple distractor cues and show search advantages for distractor c...
Acute stress has been found to impair goal-directed instrumental behaviour, a cognitively flexible behaviour that requires cognitive control. The current study aimed to investigate the role of individual differences in baseline and stress-induced changes in working memory (WM) on the shift to less goal-directed responding under stress. To this end,...
Memories of past experiences can guide our decisions. Thus, if memories are undermined or distorted, decision making should be affected. Nevertheless, little empirical research has been done to examine the role of memory in reinforcement decision-making. We hypothesized that if memories guide choices in a conditioning decision-making task, then man...
The present study examined whether mock offenders who were instructed to falsely deny crime details or to simulate amnesia, would consequently experience impaired memory. Ninety‐three university students were first asked to commit a mock crime and were then assigned to three different conditions (i.e., false denial, simulated amnesia and truth tell...
The goal of the present experiment was to examine the effect of certain (deceptive) strategies (e.g., false denial) on memory. Specifically, participants were shown a traumatic virtual reality (VR) video of an airplane crash. Following this, participants (N= 94) received questions concerning details from the VR scene in a baseline memory task. Then...
Instrumental learning, i.e., learning that specific behaviors lead to desired outcomes, occurs through goal-directed and habit memory systems. Exposure to acute stress has been shown to result in less goal-directed control, thus rendering behavior more habitual. The aim of the current studies was to replicate and extend findings on stress-induced p...
False memories can result in severe legal consequences including the imprisonment of innocent people. False memory in eyewitnesses is the largest factor contributing to miscarriages of justice in the United States. To date, no study has focused on how false memories might play a role in the Chinese legal system. The purpose of this review is to sum...
Different theoretical views exist regarding whether false memories contain perceptual information or are merely conceptual in nature. To address this question, we conducted three experiments to examine whether false memories for pictures had a priming effect on a perceptual closure task. In Experiment 1, participants were presented with pictorial v...
Background
Acute stress can have an effect on pain sensitivity, yet the direction of the effect – whether it is hypoalgesic or hyperalgesic ‐ is mixed across studies. Moreover, which part of the stress response influences pain sensitivity is still unclear. In the current experimental study, we aim to examine the effect of acute stress on heat pain...
Studies suggest that frontal alpha asymmetry is closely linked to psychological adjustment following stressful experiences, such that more left-sided frontal activation during symptom provocation might predict lower levels of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Here, we tested whether frontal asymmetry at rest and during exposure to neutral, posi...
Brewin and Andrews recently argued that expert witnesses should be cautious when informing the legal arena about the potential for false memories. We argue that memory researchers—whose studies often were inspired by miscarriages of justice due to erroneous statements provided by witnesses, victims, or defendants—can and should emphasize the base r...