Abstract
The aim of the study was to throw more light on the relationship between rumination and cognitive-control processes. Seventy-eight adults were assessed with respect to rumination tendencies by means of the LEIDS-r before performing a Stroop task, an event-file task assessing the automatic retrieval of irrelevant information, an attentional set-shifting task, and the Attentional Network Task, which provided scores for alerting, orienting, and executive control functioning. The size of the Stroop effect and irrelevant retrieval in the event-five task were positively correlated with the tendency to ruminate, while all other scores did not correlate with any rumination scale. Controlling for depressive tendencies eliminated the Stroop-related finding (an observation that may account for previous failures to replicate), but not the event-file finding. Taken altogether, our results suggest that rumination does not affect attention, executive control, or response selection in general, but rather selectively impairs the control of stimulus-induced retrieval of irrelevant information.
Highlights
Adaptive human behavior is commonly taken to reflect the operation of cognitive-control processes that organize lowerlevel information-processing streams according to the current task and intention
We focused on the interaction between Color and Response—our key indicator—and, as a control, the interaction between Shape and Response
Standard deviations (SD) of the mean are shown in parentheses
Summary
Adaptive human behavior is commonly taken to reflect the operation of cognitive-control processes that organize lowerlevel information-processing streams according to the current task and intention. Increasing evidence suggests that individuals exhibit systematic differences in the way they perform cognitive-control processes, and it was these differences that the present study was aimed at. People have shown systematic interindividual and intraindividual differences regarding the degree to which their. The goal of this study was to investigate a possibly potent personality characteristic that might be associated with a systematic metacontrol bias, at least with respect to some control-relevant tasks: rumination. According to Whitmer and Gotlib In terms of metacontrol theory, this amounts to a strong bias toward persistence, at the expense of flexibility. Rumination and cognitive reactivity to sad mood in
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