The Effects of Experimentally Induced Rumination Versus Distraction on Analogue Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms
Section snippets
Participants
Participants were 51 students who had experienced a negative event within the past 2 years and still felt distressed by this event at the time of the study. Potential participants were identified by an online screening questionnaire. In addition to screening for the exclusion criteria of suicidality, self-injury, and psychosis, the questionnaire also included an open question inquiring whether students had experienced a negative life event within the past 2 years. Students who indicated that
Preexperiment Group Differences
As shown in Table 1, the only group differences prior to the experiment were a significantly higher BDI score and a trend for higher levels of distress during the event narrative in the rumination condition when compared to the control condition. BDI scores and distress during the narrative were also significantly correlated with intrusive memories and negative mood and were therefore included as covariates in all analyses testing the hypotheses. Omitting these covariates did not change the
Discussion
The aim of this study was to experimentally test the hypothesis that trauma-related rumination contributes to the maintenance of posttraumatic stress symptoms. For ethical reasons, an analogue paradigm was used, which focused on distressing life events experienced by a nonclinical sample instead of real traumas. As expected, recalling and narrating these events in the session led to an increase in negative mood and triggered intrusive memories. In addition, participants indicated that they had
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