Leaving the door open: Trauma, updating, and the development of PTSD symptoms
Section snippets
Participants
Eighty-two Israeli male firefighters participated in the study. Sample size was based on the detection of medium-sized associations (r = 0.30; two-sided)3
Impact of traumatic vs. neutral content on updating
An ANOVA including the factors Stimulus Type (neutral vs. traumatic), Valence (positive-to-negative vs. negative-to-positive reversal), and Updating Type (target vs. context updating) and accuracy rates as dependent variable revealed a significant main effect of Updating Type, F(1,80) = 15.80, p < .001, ηp2 = 0.17, reflecting higher accuracy rates for context as opposed to target updating, t(80) = 3.97, p < .001, d = 0.66. The effect size was in the medium-to-large range (Cohen, 1988). In
Discussion
The current study investigated whether traumatic – as compared to neutral – content impairs updating and whether this impairment correlates with PTSD symptoms in a sample of active-duty firefighters. In line with the predictive processing framework, we postulated and found that traumatic – as compared to neutral content – impaired updating. This effect was only evident for negative-to-positive updating and not for positive-to-negative updating. Moreover, we found that impaired
Conclusion and outlook
Despite these limitations, the current findings contribute to the current literature. On the one hand, they support the premise of the predictive processing account of PTSD (Kube et al., 2020) that traumatic stress impacts subsequent updating of trauma-related hypotheses, which is in turn linked to PTSD symptom development. On the other hand, they underline the clinical relevance of updating processes in the context of PTSD. That is, if replicated, our findings indicate that helping traumatized
Funding statement
This work was supported by the Binational Science Foundation; BSF (Grant #2015_143) to ELG and GAB.
Acknowledgements
MRSs participation in this project was supported by a fellowship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). SHN is grateful to the Azrieli Foundation for the award of an Azrieli Fellowship. BEWs participation in this project was supported by a Minerva Fellowship of the Minerva Stiftung Gesellschaft fuer die Forschung mbH.
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Context as a barrier: Impaired contextual processing increases the tendency to develop PTSD symptoms across repeated exposure to trauma
2023, Journal of Anxiety DisordersTrajectories of resilience and mental distress to global major disruptions
2022, Trends in Cognitive SciencesCitation Excerpt :However, the assessment of adaptative cognitive processes and their changes over time should also include (ideally with high frequency) assessments of these processes using sufficiently reliable cognitive tests and paradigms. The first steps in this direction have been made by the LORA study, comprising a comprehensive battery of cognitive assessments [98] and laboratory studies from the field of regulatory flexibility [99]. These approaches might also help link adaptive cognitive processes to their neurophysiological correlates.
Reacting to changing environment: Updating patterns in social anxiety
2022, Behaviour Research and TherapyCitation Excerpt :For example, high but not low-SA individuals displayed updating difficulties in a Wisconsin Card Sorting task when social information (faces) was used but not when non-social information (geometric shapes) was used (Mohlman & DeVito, 2017). Second, the inconsistent pattern of results may be related to the valence of the updating direction: positive updating entails learning that a specific stimulus that was associated with a negative outcome becomes positive, whereas negative updating entails learning that a specific stimulus that was associated with a positive outcome becomes negative (e.g., Levy-Gigi et al., 2015; Sopp et al., 2022). Indeed, studies that used positive updating (i.e., negative-to-positive direction) and negative updating (i.e., positive-to-negative direction) of social scenarios revealed that SA is associated with difficulties only in positive updating (Beltzer et al., 2019; Everaert et al., 2018, 2020).
The Dual Role of Time Perception in Trauma-Exposed Individuals: A Conceptual Review
2023, Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and PolicyThe Lasting Effects of Early Adversity and Updating Ability on the Tendency to Develop PTSD Symptoms Following Exposure to Trauma in Adulthood
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These authors contributed equally to this work.