Cognitive Psychology Journal

The Design of neurofeedback protocol and it’s effect on impulsivity, emotional instability, self-mutilation behavior in patient with borderline personality disorder (BPD)

Kamran Yazdanbakhsh

Borderline personality disorder is a disorder with a pervasive pattern of instability in interpersonal relationships, self-image, and emotions with impulsivity. This disorder is characterized by defects in the frontal activity circuits that play an important role in inhibiting and aggression regulation. The aim of this study is to design a neurofeedback protocol and investigate its effect on impulsivity, emotional instability and self-mutilation behavior in patients with borderline personality disorder. This study is a quasi-experimental study with a pre-test, post-test, follow up and control group design. The research sample consisted of 30 patients with borderline personality disorder that received a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder according to the diagnosis of a psychiatrist and a structured clinical interview based on DSM5. They were selected by available sampling and divided into experimental (neurofeedback training) and control groups randomly. The experimental group underwent 30 sessions of neurofeedback training and the control group was placed on a waiting list.

After the last treatment session, both groups were re-evaluated. To collect the data, The Borderline Personality Disorder Scale (STB), Barat Impulsivity Questionnaire (1957 Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (Gratz and Roemer ,2004), and the Self-injury Scale (Swanson et al., 1998) were used. Three months after the study, the subjects were followed up again . The results showed that after controlling the effect of pretest, neurofeedback training had a significant effect on reducing the impulsivity, emotional instability and its components, as well as self-mutilation behavior in the experimental group compared to the control group(p<0/001(. With regard these results, we can say that the neurofeedback training method is an effective way to reduce the impulsivity, emotion dysregulation, and self-mutilation behavior in the treatment centers.

The Psychological Function of Nostalgia: Increasing Intrinsic Self-Expression and Decreasing Extrinsic Self-Definition

Ebrahim Ahmadi

Previous findings have shown the many functions of nostalgia, for example, increasing mental health, and the current research aimed to explain those findings by testing the theoretical explanation that the benefits of nostalgia come from the fact that nostalgia reminds us of our intrinsic self. Aiming to investigate the effect of nostalgia on authenticity (intrinsic self-expression) and extrinsic self-definition (concern about meeting society's standards and the expectations of others), Out of 30,000 mobile phone subscribers in Tehran and Karaj, 451 (200 men) with an average age of 40 years were sampled by the convenience method and in an experimental design were randomly assigned to two groups of nostalgia (who thought of a nostalgic memory) and no nostalgia (who thought of an ordinary memory). Intrinsic self-expression was measured by the Authenticity Inventory (Kernis and Goldman, 2006) and extrinsic self-definition by the Extrinsic Contingency Focus Scale (Williams et al., 2010). T-tests showed that the nostalgia group rated their past personality more authentic and reported less extrinsic self-definition and Conditional Process Modelling showed that nostalgia reduced extrinsic self-definition by increasing authenticity. Based on these findings, nostalgia can help in the treatment of mental disorders.

Comparing the cognitive functions of passionate lover and normal people

Mahnaz Joukar KamalAbadi

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to compare the cognitive functions of people with passionate love and normal people. Method: In this research, 500 students from persian golf University Bushehr , who studied in 2017-2018, were selected through purposeful sampling with a mean age of 21 years and filled the passionate love scale (PLS). Individuals who scored between 135 and 106 in the passionate love group and Those who scored 105-15 were in the normal group. Of these people, 204 were selected for Stroop, Wisconsin and Continuous Performance tests and analyzed by multivariate analysis of variance. Results: the study showed that there is a significant difference between respondents with passionate love and normal people in terms of inhibition. No significant difference was observed between the two groups in the cognitive flexibility and attention (P> 0.05). Discussion: According to the findings, people with passionate love of inhibition have a weaker response than normal people, and the lack of difference between the two groups in the component of cognitive flexibility and attention point to the similar performance of these two groups in cognitive functions. Findings show the attention component in the two groups is different based on gender.

The effect of attention control on mind wandering

Siavash Talepasand

The purpose of this research is to investigate the effect of attention control on mind wandering. The method of this research was semi-experimental. The statistical population includes fifth and sixth grade female students of Semnan city in the academic year of 1400-1401. The number of 38 people from the statistical population was calculated as available, and in order to predict the drop of the subjects or the loss of data, 2 people were present in the study more than the number of the calculated sample. The tool used to measure mind wandering was the Stroop test, which was completed under active and reactive attention control conditions. The data were analyzed using one-factor analysis of variance and repeated measurement by SPSS25 software. The findings showed that mind wandering is more in active attention control conditions than in reactive attention control conditions. The findings of this study can provide useful insight in understanding the phenomenon of mind wandering. Teachers and educational designers, having the knowledge related to this field, can design and produce educational content that students will experience during virtual education, where the minimum supervision by the teacher takes place during the learning process. The wandering of the mind will be less on the part of the students.

Content Analysis of Eating Disorders Metaphorical Posts in Cyberspace

Fatteme Raiisi

People with eating disorders express their eating pathology through metaphors. This research was conducted to explain and categorize eating disorder metaphorical posts in cyberspace. The method of this qualitative study was conventional and directed text content analysis, which was carried out by Shannon's entropy method in the period of September 2019 to May 2022. The population of this study included all messages and posts related to eating disorders that were posted or left comments on social networks. Due to the qualitative nature of this study, based on the rule of theoretical saturation and according to the opinion of experts in this field, 250 posts with psychological content were purposefully selected and analyzed. Then categories and subcategories were manually analyzed. Results indicated; metaphoric posts or messages related to eating disorders fall into two main categories of embodiment characteristics and non-embodiment metaphors source domains. On the other hand, each of these two main categories has subcategories that are separated from each other by cognitive and psychological characteristics. It seems; different messages and posts related to eating disorder metaphors need to be studied from different perspectives. Based on this, it is suggested that in future studies, these metaphorical posts should be examined according to the type of interventions effective on them.

Comparison of the effect of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS (and Transcranial Random Noise Stimulation (tRNS (combined with cognitive training on working memory performance of people with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder

Jalil Fath Abadi

This study aimed to comparison of the effect of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) and Transcranial Random Noise Stimulation (tRNS) combined with cognitive training on working memory performance of people with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. For this purpose, 45 children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in zahedan city were purposefully selected as the research sample. Subjects were divided into three groups: tDCS, tRNS and placebo group. Subjects in the experimental groups received 5 sessions of electrical stimulation (tDCS and tRNS) with an interval of 24 hours between each session; placebo group also received fake stimulation (non-effective). At the same time, all subjects also received cognitive rehabilitation of working memory. All subjects were evaluated before and after the stimulation and one week after the stimulation using the N-back task and the Wechsler Digit span test. The data were analyzed using repeated measures analysis of variance. The results showed that in the tDCS group, there was a significant difference in most working memory components from the pre-test stage to the follow-up (p<0.001). In the tRNS group, a significant difference was found in the component of direct digit span and reverse digit span in the research stages. In the comparison between the two experimental groups, the effectiveness of the tDCS group was higher than that of the tRNS group. Also, no significant difference was found in most of the components between the tRNS and placebo groups (p>0.05). Overall, the results of this study show that tDCS was more effective than tRNS in working memory and this method can be used together with other treatments to improve the working memory of children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder.