Yu-Tung J. Sun , Melanie K.T. Takarangi , Reginald D.V. Nixon
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
Background and Objectives
Research shows that people can lack meta-awareness (i.e., being explicitly aware) of their trauma-related thoughts, which impacts our understanding of re-experiencing symptoms, a key symptom type in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), assessed through self-report. This preliminarily study explored differences between (meta-)aware and unaware intrusion characteristics to understand why some intrusions are not immediately apparent to individuals.
Methods
Trauma-exposed participants (N = 78) were recruited from online crowd-sourcing platforms to complete an online meta-awareness task. During a reading task, participants were intermittently probed to index the occurrence of unreported (i.e., unaware) trauma-related intrusions. Once participants indicated trauma-related intrusions were present, they then completed a questionnaire that indexed intrusion characteristics.
Results
Although unaware intrusions did occur in a subset of the sample, there were no fundamental differences between aware and unaware intrusions in terms of modality of experience (imagery vs. non-imagery), meaningfulness, accessibility, or other characteristics (e.g., vividness).
Limitations
There was potential for lower participant engagement and attention due to the online delivery of the meta-awareness task, which may have minimized meta-awareness failure. Future research could consider using a continuous measure to index levels of meta-awareness. In addition, recruiting clinical samples (e.g., individuals with PTSD) who typically experience multiple daily intrusions would allow generalizability of the current findings to be tested.
Conclusions
Our findings from this preliminary study suggest that unaware and aware intrusions show more commonality than not in their characteristics, with further research required to improve our understanding of the mechanisms leading to meta-awareness or lack of in PTSD.
期刊介绍：
The publication of the book Psychotherapy by Reciprocal Inhibition (1958) by the co-founding editor of this Journal, Joseph Wolpe, marked a major change in the understanding and treatment of mental disorders. The book used principles from empirical behavioral science to explain psychopathological phenomena and the resulting explanations were critically tested and used to derive effective treatments. The second half of the 20th century saw this rigorous scientific approach come to fruition. Experimental approaches to psychopathology, in particular those used to test conditioning theories and cognitive theories, have steadily expanded, and experimental analysis of processes characterising and maintaining mental disorders have become an established research area.
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