Cognitive Inflexibility Among Ruminators and Nonruminators

“…to ruminate about their depressive symptoms 1 month after their loss were more severely depressed 6 months after their loss than bereaved people who did not tend to ruminate, even after taking into account initial levels of depressive symptoms at 1 month post-loss (Nolen-Hoeksema et al., 1994).”

“In addition, rumination has been linked to difficulties in attentional switching and mental flexibility in studies examining depressive symptoms in adults (Altamirano, Miyake, & Whitmer, 2010; Davis & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000; De Lissnyder, Koster, Derakshan, & De Raedt, 2010).”

“Second, to date, research on cognitive control in rumination has mainly used non-emotional stimuli (Davis and Nolen-Hoeksema 2000; Whitmer and Banich 2007).”

“Research indicates that rumination is perseverative and may inhibit one’s ability to problem-solve by depleting concentration and contributing to inflexible thinking (Davis and Nolen-Hoeksema 2000; Miranda and Nolen-Hoeksema 2007).”

“Davis and Nolen-Hoeksema (2000) suggested rumination may be characterised and maintained by an inflexible cognitive style.”

“…is a key metacognitive skill that decreases in such disorders as generalized anxiety disorder and depression; see Ashby, Isen, & Turken, 1999; Davis & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000; Fossati, Ergis, & Allilaire, 2001; Roemer, 1997; cf. to Well’s research—for a review, see Wells & Papageorgiou, 2004…”

“Published by Elsevier Inc a b s t r a c t a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 4 September 2016 Received in revised form 13 December 2016 Accepted 4 January 2017 Available online 07 January 2017 The present study examined the impacts of major depressive disorder (MDD) on visual and…”

“When a patient is worried, he or she devotes attentional resources to the ruminative linguistic processing of threatening stimuli (Price and Mohlman, 2007), the ability to shift resources between the cognitive tasks may be attenuated, thereby reducing task performance accuracy (Davis and Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000; Sumner e…”

“Supporting the link between rumination and cognitive flexibility is Davis and Nolen-Hoeksema’s (2000) research showing that ruminators displayed more perseverative errors and had more difficulty in maintaining set on the WCST than did non-ruminators.”

“Davis and Nolen-Hoeksema (2000) showed using the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test that ruminators are characterized by cognitive inflexibility.”

“Research indicates that rumination is related to impaired cognitive control when processing non-emotional information (Davis and Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000; Whitmer and Banich, 2007; De Lissnyder et al., 2011) as well as emotional information (Joormann, 2006; Lau et al.”

“For example, Davis and Nolen-Hoeksema (2000) found that individuals with high levels of trait rumination tended to perseverate more on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task than individuals who reported less dispositional use of rumination in response to negative mood states.”

“The vicious circle of thoughts impairs cognitive capacities (Davis and Nolen-Hoeksema 2000), and the ruminator becomes unable to properly direct the attention, to frame the context, to concentrate on the relevant items, and does not succeed in solving the problem (Ward et al. 2003).”

“Ruminators also show general deficits in the ability to shift attention from unhelpful to helpful strategies (Davis & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000).”

“Difficulties with inhibition of irrelevant information and flexibly shifting the focus of attention have been particularly implicated in rumination (Davis & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000; De Lissnyder, Derakshan, De Raedt, & Koster, 2011; Joormann, 2006; Whitmer & Banich, 2007).”

“…rumination had no such beneficial effects, which is consistent with the generally negative picture of rumination that has emerged from prior work (Davis & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000; Lyubomirksy, Caldwell, & Nolen- Hoeksema, 1998; Lyubomirsky, Kasri, & Zehm, 2003; Lyubomirsky & Nolen-Hoeksema, 1995;…”

“Similarly, Davis and Nolen-Hoeksema (2000) found that ruminators had a more inflexible cognitive style, as measured by the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task.”

“Rumination decreases cognitive flexibility (Davis & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000) and problem-solving abilities (Watkins & Moulds, 2005) and is associated with reduced social support (Nolen-Hoeksema & Davis, 1999).”

“The short form has demonstrated good internal consistency in previous studies (e.g., Davis & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000), as well as in the present study (Cronbach’s α = .89).”

“Davis and Nolen-Hoeksema (2000), for example, used the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task and found that, compared to non-ruminators, ruminators made more perseverative errors, regardless of their level of depressive symptoms.”

“It also may be consistent with rumination theories of depression, according to which depressive symptoms are maintained by self-focused rumination that limits attentional and working-memory capacity available for the processing of other stimuli (e.g., Davis & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000; Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000).”

“One study investigating patients with major depressive disorder found that men who ruminated on depressive symptoms demonstrated increased perseverative behaviors, a measure of cognitive inflexibility, as compared to women who ruminated on depressive symptoms (Davis & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000).”

“Davis and Nolen-Hoeksema (2000) developed the short form of the RRS (Nolen-Hoeksema & Morrow, 1991) by selecting the ten items from the original 22-item RRS that correlated most strongly with the total RRS score in a large community sample and for which at 1 Although we screened for major…”

“Similar to high CSC rumination about one's thoughts and feelings draws on cognitive resources and thus has a deteriorating influence on cognitive task performance (e.g., Davis and Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000; Watkins and Brown, 2002; Levens et al., 2009; Owens and Derakshan, 2013).”

“Indeed, research shows that rumination is positively related to anxiety and depressive symptoms (Garnefski & Kraaij, 2006), and negatively related to problem-solving, motivation, and concentration (Davis & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000; Smith & Alloy, 2009).”

“Davis and Nolen-Hoeksema (2000) also found evidence for attentional inflexibility, with ruminators making more perseveration errors on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test and taking more time on a measure of psychomotor speed compared to non-ruminators.”

“EF deficits have been associated with higher levels of rumination and greater EF deficits in individuals with depression have been associated with higher levels of rumination (Davis and Nolen-Hoeksema 2000; Joormann and Gotlib 2008).”

“Additionally, while studying how ruminators performed on a test used to specifically measure mental flexibility, Davis and Nolen-Hoeksema (2000) found that ruminators would get ‘‘stuck’’ in a mental set and not be able to adapt to the problem at hand.”

“There are also indications that rumination is related to cognitive deficits in terms of reduced cognitive flexibility (Davis and Nolen-Hoeksema 2000), over-general memory (e.”

“…has suggested possible associations between trait rumination and cognitive inflexibility, attentional switching and inhibition of previously relevant task sets (e.g., Altamirano et al. 2010; Davis and Nolen-Hoeksema 2000; Owens and Derakshan 2013; Whitmer and Banich 2007; Whitmer and Gotlib 2012b).”

“situation wishing it had gone better” and has been employed successfully in the investigation of the dysphoric self-concept showing both construct validity with the longer form of the RSQ [7] and internal validity [23].”

“Reduced cognitive flexibility, as measured by the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, is associated with rumination.(53) Furthermore, overreliance on suppression is both ineffective and cognitively taxing, thus diminishing cognitive resources; this has been associated with poor health as measured by heightened arousal via el…”

“The Response Styles Questionnaire (Short Form) (Short RSQ: Davis & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000) provided a measure of participants’ ruminative tendencies in negative situations (e.g. ‘I think about a recent situation, wishing it had gone better’).”

“…factors for suicidal behavior, because research suggests that high levels of cognitive inflexibility are characteristic of individuals who ruminate (Davis & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000), and that cognitive inflexibility may increase brooding and thus confer risk for suicidal thinking (Miranda,…”

“By compromising the individuals’ cognitive resources (Davis & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000; Disner, Beevers, Haigh, & Beck, 2011; Hertel, 1998; Watkins & Brown, 2002), this negative self-referential thinking may prevent them from engaging in proactive anticipation.”

“Whilst it is possible that reduced EF may stem from aspects of depression not examined in this study such as rumination (Davis and Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000; Watkins and Brown, 2002) or from motivational problems (Ellis, 1991), if poor EF was a result of depressed mood or another feature of depression…”

“Davis RN, Nolen-Hoeksema S: Cognitive Inflexibility Among Ruminators and Nonruminators.”

“Interestingly, extensive research among adults has already demonstrated that EF deficits are related to the use of specific maladaptive ER strategies, such as rumination (Davis & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000; Joormann, Dkane, & Gotlib, 2006; Joormann & Gotlib, 2008).”

“This model would be consistent with clinical theories of anxiety and rumination (Borkovec, Alcaine, & Behar, 2004 ; Davis & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000 ).”

“…regulation strategies, or cognitive flexibility, may be more protective against psychopathology than effectively engaging in only one strategy (Davis and Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000; Fredrickson, 2004; Steffen et al., 2016), suggesting that it is important to understand which strategies co-occur and…”

“Consistent with this, empirical studies have demonstrated that high ruminators show more perseverative errors on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST; Davis & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000 ).”

“The fact that growing empirical work finds these impairments central to both rumination and depression (e.g., Bernblum and Mor 2010; Davis and Nolen-Hoeksema 2000; Joormann and Gotlib 2010; Joormann and Siemer 2011; Watkins and Brown 2002) makes the training developed here highly promising.”

“The short form has demonstrated good internal consistency (e.g., Davis & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000) and has been shown to correlate with measures of depression (von Hippel, Vasey, Gonda, & Stern, 2008).”

“Future studies should also address how cognitive inflexibility may be related to repetitive thought patterns, such as rumination and worry, that characterize many emotional disorders (e.g., Davis & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000; Segerstrom, Tsao, Alden, & Craske, 2000).”

“Cognitive inflexibility has been associated with repetitive thoughts (e.g., rumination), impairments in problem solving and in generating alternative views, and difficulty taking another’s perspective (Davis & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000; Hughes & Ensor, 2007).”

“Women may ruminate more than men, but rumination in men can indicate a pervasive cognitive inflexibility (Davis & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000).”

“…consider that mindfulness promotes a mental state of metacognitive supervision that can alter the automatic circuits created by repetitive thought (Davis & Nolen-Hoesksema, 2000; Fresco, Frankel, Mennin, Turk, & Heimberg, 2002; Kendal & Ingram, 1989; Segal, Williams, & Teasdale, 2002; Teasdale,…”

“Within the literature, rumination has been linked to impaired EF, including increased perseveration (Davis and Nolen-Hoeksema 2000), set-shifting (Altamirano et al. 2010; Connolly et al. 2014; De Lissnyder et al. 2010; Whitmer and Banich 2007; though see Wilkinson and Goodyer 2006 for an…”

“2003), and has been linked to a range of rigidity processes for both negatively valenced tasks (for review, Gotlib and Joormann 2010) and neutrally valenced task (Davis and Nolen-Hoeksema 2000; Owens and Derakshan 2013; Whitmer and Banich 2007; Whitmer and Gotlib 2012).”

“Low cognitive flexibility, as indexed by poorer performance on the WCST, has been linked to current depression (Grant et al., 2001; Snyder, 2013) and rumination (Davis & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000).”

“This finding compliments prior research that links deficits in executive function to maladaptive repetitive thought (Davis and Nolen-Hoeksema 2000; Segerstrom et al. 2010) and suggests that decreased executive function may diminish the ability to inhibit maladaptive repetitive thought, such as…”

“Conversely, people high in reflective rumination tend to exhibit less flexibility and have trouble shifting attention to a new task (Davis and Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000; Whitmer and Banich, 2007).”

“Evidence of executive dysfunction in depression and dysphoria (non-clinical depression) has been most consistently found on the Wisconsin Card Sort Test (WCST), a measure of cognitive flexibility (e.g. Channon, 1996; see Rogers et al., 2004 for review of early studies).”

“Trait attentional shifting did not influence any of the examined relationships, which was interesting given previous associations among shifting, anxiety, and depression (Judah et al., 2014) and research demonstrating low flexibility among those high in RNT (e.g., Davis and Nolen-Hoeksema (2000)).”

“For example, the association between past symptoms and shifting might be driven by trait rumination, which has been linked with both depression risk (see Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000) and shifting impairments (e.g., Davis & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000; De Lissnyder et al., 2012).”

“5 Nelson, 1976 WAIS-R (s) P Davis [90] 2000 62 adults (healthy) 51.”