Social anxiety disorder is the third most common mental disorder with the lifetime prevalence rate of 13.3% in the US population. Typically, it causes significant impairment in a wide range of functioning and follows a chronic, unremitting course if untreated. Over the past two decades, there has been a dramatic increase in clinical research aimed at examining underlying mechanisms maintaining social anxiety. One line of research has investigated attentional biases in social anxiety, using various cognitive experiment paradigms, including the emotional Stroop and the modified dotprobe tasks. However, overall findings are equivocal about the nature of attentional biases in social anxiety and several methodological problems limit the interpretability of the data. The present study examined attentional biases associated with social anxiety using a new research paradigm in the field of anxiety disorders: the inattentional blindness paradigm. This paradigm presents a social cue in the absence of the subjects’ expectation while they are engaged in a cognitively demanding task, thereby enabling the more purely attentional aspect of information processing to be examined reducing the influence of potential response biases or effortful strategies. Two independent experiments were conducted using nonclinical student samples consisting of individuals high in social anxiety (HSAs) versus individuals low in social anxiety (LSAs) based on the static and sustained inattentional blindness tasks. Overall, results revealed that HSAs were more likely to detect or identify a socially-threatening cue, relative to LSAs; whereas LSAs were more likely to detect or identify a non-threatening social cue, relative to HSAs. These findings were observed only in the presence of a bogus-speech manipulation. These data suggest the promising utility of the inattentional blindness paradigm in investigating attentional biases in social anxiety and perhaps other psychopathological conditions. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed. / text

<p>Researchers have recently combined clinical and cognitive areas of research in order to investigate the role of cognitive factors in explaining how emotional disorders are developed and maintained. It is believed that biased cognitive processing of emotionally relevant information can greatly affect emotional responses and behaviour where insights into such cognitive processes can have invaluable clinical implications.</p><p>The present thesis investigates the role of cognitive biases for information related to food and body appearance in individuals with eating disorders (ED) and those with non-clinically eating disorder-related concerns (NED). Are ED characterised by cognitive biases toward such information related to their specific concerns? Are such cognitive biases specific to clinical ED or present also in NED samples? Are cognitive biases operating at both conscious and unconscious levels of cognitive processing?</p><p>The tasks used to pursue these questions were: the emotional Stroop task, an Internet version of the emotional Stroop, Jacoby’s white noise paradigm and a recognition task. The influence of priming on the emotional Stroop task was also investigated in order to test whether the use of this task could be extended to more complex investigations than selective attention.</p><p>Results provide support for that cognitive processing of information related to eating and body appearance is biased in individuals with ED. It is, however, unclear whether such biased processing is specific to clinical ED. Findings further suggest that cognitive biases occur primarily at unconscious levels of cognitive processing. Support was also obtained for that the emotional Stroop task is sensitive to priming where initial body perception may be one factor influencing cognitive responses toward negative self referent words following exposure to thin ideal images. Results further suggest that the emotional Stroop task successfully can be administered via the Internet where manipulating task delivery and response mode may increase the sensitivity of this task. Some of the advantages of administering the emotional Stroop task via Internet over traditional methods are access to more heterogeneous samples, more ecologically valid situations, reduced costs and minimisation of demand characteristics.</p>

Researchers have recently combined clinical and cognitive areas of research in order to investigate the role of cognitive factors in explaining how emotional disorders are developed and maintained. It is believed that biased cognitive processing of emotionally relevant information can greatly affect emotional responses and behaviour where insights into such cognitive processes can have invaluable clinical implications. The present thesis investigates the role of cognitive biases for information related to food and body appearance in individuals with eating disorders (ED) and those with non-clinically eating disorder-related concerns (NED). Are ED characterised by cognitive biases toward such information related to their specific concerns? Are such cognitive biases specific to clinical ED or present also in NED samples? Are cognitive biases operating at both conscious and unconscious levels of cognitive processing? The tasks used to pursue these questions were: the emotional Stroop task, an Internet version of the emotional Stroop, Jacoby’s white noise paradigm and a recognition task. The influence of priming on the emotional Stroop task was also investigated in order to test whether the use of this task could be extended to more complex investigations than selective attention. Results provide support for that cognitive processing of information related to eating and body appearance is biased in individuals with ED. It is, however, unclear whether such biased processing is specific to clinical ED. Findings further suggest that cognitive biases occur primarily at unconscious levels of cognitive processing. Support was also obtained for that the emotional Stroop task is sensitive to priming where initial body perception may be one factor influencing cognitive responses toward negative self referent words following exposure to thin ideal images. Results further suggest that the emotional Stroop task successfully can be administered via the Internet where manipulating task delivery and response mode may increase the sensitivity of this task. Some of the advantages of administering the emotional Stroop task via Internet over traditional methods are access to more heterogeneous samples, more ecologically valid situations, reduced costs and minimisation of demand characteristics.

THE EMOTION-PARADOX 1 Abstract The emotion-paradox in schizophrenia describes a dissociation between the grossly impaired perception of emotion and relatively preserved experience thereof. Most posit that the emotion-paradox arises from a generalized emotion perception impairment. Others counter that it represents an artefact of methodological restrictions or a separate dissociation between explicit and implicit emotion. This thesis aimed to explain the emotion-paradox in schizophrenia and resolve the competing interpretations of its root. Two studies were conducted to this end. The studies drew from the same sample, including 45 persons with schizophrenia of various symptomatology, and 45 controls with no psychiatric anamnesis or familial history of schizophrenia. The groups did not differ in age, gender, education or music education. In Study 1, the participants listened to musical stimuli and rated their perception and experience of the valence and arousal that these stimuli relayed. In Study 2, the participants completed a newly developed emotional Stroop task, in which they identified the colour of a series of neutral and negative descriptors of positive, negative, or no symptoms of schizophrenia. Findings of Study 1 indicated: a) that persons with schizophrenia recognize musical emotions as accurately...

A significant subset of women plagued with breast cancer continue to experience chronic neuropathic pain (CNP) long after undergoing cancer treatment. Medical interventions such as pharmacotherapy and/or surgery have been most widely used to abate painful symptoms with limited efficacy. Other alternatives are required given a heavy reliance on pharmaceuticals can lead to tolerance, dependence and severe side effects. Possibilities include cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), physical therapy, and mindfulness interventions to supplement pharmacotherapies. Mindfulness practice in particular has been offered to a variety of chronic pain groups including breast cancer patients, however evidence is lacking to support its effectiveness in CNP for breast cancer survivors (BCS). The purpose of the present study was to explore the benefits a mindfulness-based stress reduction program (MBSR) may have on altering the underlying neuronal correlates linked with pain-related symptoms associated with CNP in BCS. The primary objective was to investigate how mindfulness training might possibly mediate the brain’s capacity for emotional reactivity, white matter integrity, and activation of the default mode network (DMN) and how these changes may correlate with levels of pain severity and pain interference, improving overall quality of life. To achieve these results, several brain imaging techniques were used in order to observe the correlation between the subjective experience of pain and the objective manifestation of brain changes that may be potentiated by MBSR training. A total of 23 participants were placed in either an 8 week MBSR intervention group (n=13) or a waitlist control group (n =10). All women were scanned with MRI before and after the 8 week intervention regardless of group allotment. The following neuroimaging modalities were used for each scanning session: resting state fMRI (rsfMRI) to monitor changes to functional connectivity in the default mode network (DMN); Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) to assess the structural integrity of white matter tracts; and the Emotional Stroop Task (EST) to examine emotional reactivity in response to pain related stimuli. Exploratory results from this pilot study indicate that improvements to functional connectivity were apparent in the MBSR group relative to control, indicative of more efficient communication in areas related to attention, self-awareness, emotion regulation and pain. Improvements were also noted as increased cerebral white matter health and reduced emotional reactivity to pain related stimuli in the group of MBSR trained participants relative to control. Additionally, these functional and structural changes correlated with the self-reported pain measures in the MBSR group, suggesting that the MBSR group demonstrated improvements to ratings of pain severity and pain interference whereas the opposite occurred with the control group. The results have been interpreted as improvements to patients’ perception of pain and quality of life post MBSR training, however, were not limited to the subjective experience of pain. The inclusion of neuroimaging modalities provides objective and empirical support for MBSR training as it highlights the underlying brain mechanisms that were altered as part of MBSR treatment. Ultimately, the evidence suggests that MBSR could be incorporated as part of the treatment protocol for women experiencing CNP post breast cancer treatment.