Summary: A new study reports that negative rumination can be improved by using mental imagery for adolescents. Researchers report that mental imagery improves negative affect and helps regulate the nervous system.
Although researchers have not answered why mental imagery is so effective, they hypothesize that imagery is more engaging and requires more effort, creating a greater emotional response and thus a greater excitement.
Source: Oregon State University
For teens who may be stuck in negative thinking spirals, refocusing on mental imagery is a more effective distraction than verbal thoughts, a recent study from Oregon State found. University.
A brief distraction can break the thinking spiral, making room for that person to seek help from a therapist, friend or parent, said study author Hannah Lawrence, a assistant professor of psychology in OSU’s College of Liberal Arts.
“When we get stuck thinking about negative things that happened in the past, we feel worse, and this leads to more difficulties in regulating our emotions and regulating our bodies,” Lawrence said.
“We want to connect people to some more comprehensive approach or practice that can break us out of those thought patterns.”
Lawrence runs the Translational Imagery, Depression and Suicide (TIDES) Lab at OSU, which researches risk factors and develops effective interventions for depression in youth, including interventions that can be scaled up to access these to the wider population.
“These negative things are going to happen to all of us, so we know in advance which tools we should pack in our toolbox that we can pull out to help lower our emotional reactions in the moment. , just enough to get us out of those loops. , will help us get out,” she said.
The study, published in Journal of Affective Disorders, which aimed to determine which form of negative thinking—either verbal thoughts or imagery-based thoughts—caused a greater decrease in the affect, or overall mood of the youth participants; and also which way of thinking is more effective in distracting them and helping them get out of that negative mood.
The 145 participants were aged 13 to 17 and recruited from a rural New England area where Lawrence conducted the research study. The group is mostly white and 62% female. Participants also filled out a depression questionnaire, which showed that about 39% of the group experienced clinically elevated symptoms of depression.
The researchers began by inducing a negative mood in the teenage participants, using an online game designed to create feelings of exclusion. (After the participants completed the study, the researchers explained the game to them to help ease any lingering hurt feelings.)
Participants are then divided into groups and prompted to think, either verbally or mentally image; or prompted to distract themselves, as well as with verbal thoughts or image thoughts. In the rumination group, participants were given prompts such as “Think about what kind of person you think you should be.” In the distraction group, prompts such as “Think of your grocery list” were meant to distract them from their negative affect.
To encourage verbal thoughts, the researchers trained the participants to form sentences in their head that described a lemon using specific words. To encourage mental imagery, they trained participants to imagine what a lemon would look like under different conditions.
The researchers used noninvasive sensors to record the electrical activity of the heart and skin conductance response as a way to measure physiological responses to various signals. They also asked participants to rate their current emotional affect at four different points during the study.
Although there was no significant difference in the youth’s response between the two types of rumination—both verbal thoughts and mental imagery had similar effects on their mood—the researchers found that mental imagery was more effective as a distraction than verbal thoughts.
“Using mental imagery seems to help us improve our affect, as well as regulate our nervous system,” says Lawrence.
“The fact that we didn’t have significant results for imagery meditation versus verbal meditation tells us that it doesn’t really matter what form those negative thoughts take. The part that seems to be really problematic is the stuck part—repeatedly thinking about sad or troubling things that happen.”
Researchers don’t know exactly why mental imagery is so effective, but they hypothesize it’s because imagery is more engaging and requires more effort, thus creating a stronger emotional response and greater excitement. There’s also some evidence that imagining pictures in the mind lights up the same part of the brain as seeing and experiencing those things in real life, Lawrence said.
In his work, Lawrence found that some adults seemed to meditate in only one form, while most young people reported meditating on both verbal thoughts and mental images. One possibility is that these thought patterns become self-reinforcing habits, he said, with negative images or verbal messages becoming more ingrained over time.
“That’s why I want to work with teenagers: If we can interrupt these processes early in development, maybe we can help these young people get to adulthood and not get stuck in negative patterns of behavior. -thinking about it,” Lawrence said. “We all think. It’s a matter of how long we do it, and what skills we have to stop when we want to.”
About this psychology research news
Author: Molly Rosbach
Source: Oregon State University
Contact: Molly Rosbach – Oregon State University
Image: Image credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Closed access.
“Reimagining rumination? The unique role of mental imagery in adolescents’ affective and physiological responses to rumination and distraction” by Hannah R. Lawrence et al. Journal of Affective Disorders
Abstract
Reimagining rumination? The unique role of mental imagery in adolescents’ affective and physiological responses to rumination and distraction
Rumination is associated with an increased risk for depression while distraction helps divert attention away from negative experiences, lowering the risk.
Many individuals who ruminate do so in the form of mental imagery and imagery-based rumination is more associated with depressive symptom severity than ruminating in the form of verbal thoughts. We do not yet understand why imagery-based rumination may be particularly problematic or how to intervene to reduce imagery-based rumination, however.
young people (N = 145) underwent negative mood induction followed by experimental induction of rumination or distraction in the form of mental imagery or verbal thought while affective, high-frequency heart rate variability, and skin conductance response data were collected.
Rumination was associated with similar affective, high-frequency heart rate variability, and skin conductance responses, regardless of whether youth were prompted to ruminate in the form of mental imagery or verbal thought.
Distraction led to greater affective improvement and greater increases in high-frequency heart rate variability, but similar skin conductance responses when youth were encouraged to distract themselves in the form of mental imagery compared to verbal thought.
The findings emphasize the importance of considering mental imagery in clinical contexts when assessing rumination and when intervening with distraction.
