其他摘要 | Interpretation bias is a cognitive bias which individuals tend to interpret ambiguous information in a negative manner. It is a key feature of a series of emotional disorders, plays an important role in their generation and maintenance mechanisms, and is an important target of intervention therapies. Interpretation bias can cause individuals to generate maladaptive thoughts on life events, that leads to induction of anxiety and other negative emotions. Therefore, intervention on interpretation bias can reduce the risk of excessive anxiety in case of stressful events and provides protection on mental health. Although previous studies have made some progress on interpretation bias intervention by using the method of Cognitive Bias Modification-Interpretation (CBM-I), there are still deficiencies in effect measurement as well as training paradigms. The current study aims to design a new Chinese interpretation bias measurement and training paradigm to address these two problems, by establishing an implicit sentence constructing task using homographs, then applying cognitive restructuring techniques in a new interpretation bias intervention paradigm to train the capability to arise awareness of negative interpretations and generate more adaptive interpretations instead. Bearing these objectives, two studies were designed as follow.
Study 1 is aimed at establishing the Sentence Constructing Task (SCT) with Chinese homographs, testing its reliability, validity and degree of implicitly. In Experiment 1, 27 non-anxious college students were recruited to rate each meaning of the 82 researcher-selected homographs for emotional valence and usage frequency, and a list of 72 homographs was generated in which their negative meanings had significantly lower valence while the two meanings didn’t differ in frequency. In Experiment 2, 62 college students (29 with anxiety symptoms and 33 without) were
asked to perform the SCT, in which the homographs were presented and the participants need to use each one of them to write down a sentence. Discrimination of each homograph item was tested using their correlation with GAD-7 score, items with insignificant correlations were excluded and 34 anxiety-related homographs remained. The 34-item SCT showed good reliability, Cronbach's α=0.824 (Overall Score, OS), 0.762 (Semantic Valence, SV) and 0.819 (Contextual Valence, CV). Validity was also tested through a comparison of scores between anxious and non-anxious participants, anxious participants scored significantly higher on OS and CV, and difference in SM scores reached marginal significance. In Experiment 3, the SCT was adjusted into a 17-item online task with a 3-minute time limit, and was given to 222 undergraduate students along with a Scrambled Sentence Test (SST). Participants were asked to report whether they had figured out the purpose of the two tasks, and as a result, there were significantly fewer participants who figured out the intentions of SCT than of SST, showing that SCT is a more implicit measurement. Results above approves that SCT can be used in the measurement of intervention effects in the following study.
In study 2, cognitive restructure training is carried out to lower interpretation bias, and therapeutic metaphors were added to examine whether it can bring greater training effects. 227 college students were divided into 3 groups (86 in metaphorical restructure group, 82 in conventional restructure group and 59 in control group) to participate in an 8-day intervention with 2 1-hour online training sessions and 3 pieces of homework. Main steps in the training program includes: (1) viewing a 5-minute video clip introducing cognitive restructuring, (2) reading examples of metaphorical or conventional restructuring, (3) practicing cognitive restructure with real-life disturbing thoughts and generating more adaptive interpretations. Interpretation bias were measured before and after intervention using SCT and SST, state anxiety and negative affects were also reported. Results showed that participants’ level of mental distress reduced significantly after the restructure practice, and for those in the metaphorical group, metaphors were used more frequently when expressing their new thoughts. Compared to control group, training effects on interpretation bias were significant with both measurement in metaphorical restructure group, while in conventional restructure group the training effect was only visible through SST. In both intervention groups, state anxiety and negative affects reduced after training and automatic negative thoughts reduced one week after training. Additionally, the reduction of interpretation bias mediated the intervention effect of both restructure training on the reduction of automatic negative thoughts. Results above indicate that cognitive restructure training can consciously help replace maladaptive thoughts with adaptive ones, which leads to the transformation of habitual interpretation manners after numerous trails of practice.
In conclusion, the current study summarized Chinese homographs that can be used to measure interpretation bias for the first time, and the 34-item SCT has good reliability, validity and implicitly, which makes up for the lack of ambiguous word paradigms in Chinese. And cognitive reconstruction training can effectively reduce interpretation bias , relieve negative emotions and reduce experience of automatic negative thoughts, which has certain practical significance and promotion value for maintaining college students' mental health. |
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