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Concreteness of Idiographic Periods of Worry and Depressive Rumination

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Abstract

Stöber (Behav Res Ther 36:751–756, 1998) asserts that worry is characterized by reduced concreteness of thought that interferes with successful emotional processing via reduction of imagery. Extant research has not examined concreteness of thought during a period of idiographic worry, nor has it directly compared concreteness during worrisome thinking to concreteness during other types of repetitive negative thinking such as depressive rumination. We sought to test Stöber’s theory as it relates to idiographic periods of worry, and further examined its applicability to periods of depressive rumination. Consistent with Stöber’s theory, we found that worry and depressive rumination were significantly and non-differentially more abstract than was baseline mentation. Contrary to Stöber’s theory, concreteness of thought was not related to degree of reported imagery during either worry or depressive rumination. Theoretical and clinical implications of these findings are discussed.

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Fig. 1

Notes

  1. Because participants handwrote their thought samples, some thought samples were illegible and thus were unable to be coded. As a result, a total of 215 thought samples and their respective concreteness ratings are missing from the data.

  2. Due to a clerical error, there was a slight difference in the definitions we provided for worry and depressive rumination. We defined worry as involving either “thoughts or images” but depressive rumination as involving only “thoughts.” Despite mentioning images in the definition of worry, worry was characterized by less imagery-based activity than was depressive rumination, which replicated findings from McLaughlin et al. (2007) indicating that worry is characterized by higher levels of verbal-linguistic activity. Furthermore, previous studies that have found cyclical alternations of hypervigilance to threat followed by avoidance of threat have involved both verbal and pictoral stimuli (Mogg et al. 2004; Oathes et al. 2011). However, we cannot rule out the possibility that the inadvertent difference in the mention of imagery activity could account for differential findings regarding worry and depressive rumination.

  3. We aimed to differentiate depressive rumination from trauma-recall, which is another type of repetitive thinking with its own unique characteristics (see Behar et al. 2005).

  4. Although imagery can also involve auditory, kinaesthetic and gustatory modalities, our study focused on visual imagery to remain consistent with other studies exploring the verbal-linguistic versus imagery-based nature of repetitive thinking (e.g., Behar et al. 2005; McLaughlin et al. 2007).

  5. For this and all subsequent analyses, we first ran a 2 (Order: worry first, depressive rumination first) × 3 (Induction) × 4 (Phase) mixed model ANOVA, but in no case was there a significant effect involving Order. Therefore, all dependent variables were collapsed across Order. All data are available from the first author upon request.

  6. Participants also rated the percentage of time they noticed something in their mind other than thoughts or images (‘neither’). We initially ran a 3 (Induction) × 4 (Phase) repeated measures ANOVA on the mean percentage of ‘neither’ ratings. Results indicated that there were no significant effects of Induction or Phase. Due to (a) the relatively low frequency of this type of mentation (6.62–9.28%) and (b) our inability to interpret these results or speculate regarding the type of cognitive activity participants were experiencing, we have omitted the ‘neither’ mentation ratings from subsequent analyses. These data are available from the first author upon request.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Brittany Bohacz and Ian Jorgensen for help with coding of thought samples, and to Daniel Conybeare for his help with coding of thought samples and for his comments on previous versions of this manuscript.

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  1. Department of Psychology (M/C 285), University of Illinois at Chicago, 1007 W. Harrison Street, Chicago, IL, 60607-7137, USA

    Michelle Goldwin & Evelyn Behar

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  1. Michelle Goldwin
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  2. Evelyn Behar
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Correspondence to Michelle Goldwin.

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Goldwin, M., Behar, E. Concreteness of Idiographic Periods of Worry and Depressive Rumination. Cogn Ther Res 36, 840–846 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-011-9428-1

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