Dissertation

Looking in for Answers: Examining the Role of Internal Attention in Internally-Directed Cognition and Mental Health

Amir, Iftach

2022

Overview

The capacity to selectively attend to internal experiences – internal attention (IA) – is a fundamental characteristic of human mental life and functionally important. IA enables adaptive forms of internally-directed cognition (IDC) (e.g., goal-setting) through its close links with working memory and inhibition. In turn, IA can alternatively potentiate maladaptive forms of IDC (e.g., rumination). For example, by narrowing attentional scope to negative thoughts and memories. Accordingly, IA is a potential target and mechanism of change for psychological interventions; for novel and established (e.g., mindfulness-based) interventions. Despite the theorized importance of IA in mental health, research has primarily focused on external (i.e., sensory-perceptual) attention and its dysregulation; likely due to lack of cognitive-experimental methods designed to directly measure and quantify IA and its dysregulation.We therefore aimed to advance the science of IA in three forms – its measurement, its role in maladaptive IDC and mental health, and as a candidate intervention mechanism. First, to advance measurement methods of IA, we introduced a novel experimental method designed to provide greater experimental control over the content and timing of verbal thought-like stimuli, to permit novel experimental study of IA processes (Study 1). Second, to advance understanding of the role of IA in maladaptive IDC and mental health, we test the role of IA processes in psychological disorders (attentional disengagement and bias in anxiety and depression, in Study 1; cognitive inhibition and PTSD, in Study 2). Furthermore, we develop a novel formalized computational theory and model, grounded in complex dynamical systems, for understanding the role of IA in IDC and mental health (Study 3). Third, to examine IA as a candidate intervention target, we test the role of selective IA, in the form of cognitive inhibition, as a mechanism-of-change in a randomized controlled trial of a mindfulness-based intervention targeting IDC, among a traumatized population in whom cognitive inhibition is thought to be impaired and related to trauma-related psychopathology (Study 2).Accordingly, in Study 1, the novel Simulated Thought Paradigm (STP) was integrated into established cognitive-experimental tasks. In two independent experiments (NTotal = 122) we found and replicated evidence that emotional reactivity to negative thoughts predicted difficulty disengaging IA from-, as well as biased selective IA to-, those thoughts, which predicted cognitive vulnerability (e.g., negative repetitive thinking) and, in-turn, anxiety and depression. These studies and findings have exciting implications for the study of internal attention broadly – through the potential application of STP to existing and novel research questions and methods, as well as for informing models of IA in mental health.In Study 2, in a randomized wait-list control trial of Mindfulness-based Trauma Recovery for Refugees among traumatized asylum-seekers (N = 143), we found that IA dysregulation, in the form of cognitive disinhibition of trauma- and threat-related information, were associated with greater PTSD symptom severity. Although the intervention led to improved CI of trauma- and threat-related information, this change process did not mediate the intervention’s therapeutic effect on PTSD. Findings have implications for extant theory implicating cognitive inhibition deficits in post-traumatic stress and the role of IA in mental health; as well as for understanding of mechanisms of action of mindfulness-based interventions broadly and with respect to IA as a candidate intervention mechanism more specifically.

• Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
• Subject: Anxiety / Attention / Behavior / Brain research / Clinical psychology / Cognition & reasoning / Cognitive psychology / Design / Emotional disorders / Emotions / Executive function / Information processing / Literature / Meditation / Memory / Mental depression / Mental disorders / Mental health / Mindfulness / Nervous system / Neurosciences / Science fiction & fantasy / System theory / Systems science
• ISBN: 9798384341659