The impaired disengagement hypothesis

[Daniel E.]

Understanding depressive rumination from a cognitive science perspective: the impaired disengagement hypothesis [Clin Psychol Rev. 2011]

Persisting negative thoughts are considered a hallmark of depression. Recent information-processing approaches have begun to uncover underlying mechanisms of depressive rumination. Despite marked advances in this area, there is a lack of integration between psychopathology and cognitive (neuro) science research. We propose the 'impaired disengagement' hypothesis as a unifying framework between both approaches. The core tenet of our model is that prolonged processing of self-referent material is due to impaired attentional disengagement from negative self-referent information. We discuss empirical evidence for this framework and outline future ways in which the causal predictions of this model can be tested. The proposed framework can account for effectiveness of various treatments for depression and may aid in devising new interventions to target depressive cognition.

 

[Daniel E.]

From the above paper, what they mean by "impaired attentional disengagement":

We postulate difficulty to disengage attention as the central engine that puts individuals at risk for heightened levels of rumination and brooding in particular. That is, individuals who are characterized by a difficulty to exercise attentional control in response to negative thoughts are likely to experience persistent rumination. Attentional control is broadly conceived here and refers to the ability to selectively attend to task-relevant information and to inhibit distraction by task-irrelevant information.

And regarding "low conflict" in the above diagram:

In most individuals self-critical negative thoughts typically are not in line with existing positive self views. Therefore after some time these thoughts (or the affiliated negative mood) will cause the signaling of cognitive conflict....There is emerging evidence that conflict signaling is reduced for negative material when individuals are in a negative mood state (Foti & Hajcak, 2010). The absence of conflict signaling will be associated with a sustained attentional focus on self-referring negative information.