Decreased effectiveness of a focused–distraction strategy in dysphoric individuals

摘要

The purpose of the present study was to clarify the mechanism responsible for high frequency, negative intrusive thoughts in dysphoric individuals. Dysphoric and non-dysphoric participants were asked to suppress their negative thoughts by focusing on a memory task, to simply suppress their negative thoughts, or to think about something they of their own choice for 3 minutes. The results showed that dysphoric participants reported intrusive thoughts more frequently than did non-dysphoric participants, only in the focused–distraction condition. There was no significant difference in memory-task performance between dysphoric and non-dysphoric participants. Moreover, compared to the non-dypshoric participants, the dysphoric participants reported less reduction in suppression effort when using a focused–distraction strategy, and the maintained effort was correlated with the number of negative intrusions. These results indicate that negative intrusions enter dysphoric individuals' minds, regardless of whether they focus attention on distractors. The maintenance of suppression-effort may be causally related to these intrusions. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.