A cognitive vulnerability in
cognitive psychology
Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning.
Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, which ...
is an erroneous belief,
cognitive bias
A cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment. Individuals create their own "subjective reality" from their perception of the input. An individual's construction of reality, not the objective input, m ...
, or pattern of thought that predisposes an individual to psychological problems.
The vulnerability exists before the symptoms of a psychological disorder appear.
After the individual encounters a stressful experience, the cognitive vulnerability shapes a maladaptive response that increases the likelihood of a psychological disorder.
In
psychopathology
Psychopathology is the study of abnormal cognition, behaviour, and experiences which differs according to social norms and rests upon a number of constructs that are deemed to be the social norm at any particular era.
Biological psychopatholo ...
, there are several perspectives from which the origins of cognitive vulnerabilities can be examined,
It is the path way of including cognitive schema models, hopelessness models, and
attachment theory
Attachment theory is a psychological, evolutionary and ethological theory concerning relationships between humans. The most important tenet is that young children need to develop a relationship with at least one primary caregiver for normal ...
.
Attentional bias
Attentional bias refers to how a person's perception is affected by selective factors in their attention. Attentional biases may explain an individual's failure to consider alternative possibilities when occupied with an existing train of thought. ...
is one mechanism leading to faulty cognitive bias that leads to cognitive vulnerability. Allocating a danger level to a threat depends on the urgency or intensity of the threshold. Anxiety is not associated with selective orientation.
Theories
Cognitive theory
Preliminary or "distal" causes contribute to the formation of a cognitive vulnerability that ultimately, via immediate or proximal causes, leads to the individual manifesting symptoms of the disorder. Immediate cognitive and emotional responses trigger imagery and assumptions formed in the past leading to offsetting, defensive behavior and in turn reinforcing mistaken beliefs or other cognitive vulnerabilities.
Attachment theory
The contact made with caretakers determines a certain attachment process. When secure attachment is disrupted and starts to become insecure,
abnormal patterns begin, increasing risk for depression. Working models build
perception
Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous system ...
s of relationships with others. Cognitive vulnerability is created with maladaptive cognitive processing when building relationships and attachments.
The diathesis-stress relationship
Diathesis contributes to vulnerability.
The diathesis refers to the inclination to illness. In the diathesis-stress relationship, hidden vulnerability is activated through events that the individual perceives as stressful. Vulnerability in psychological terms is implied as an increased probability of emotional pain and some type of
psychopathology
Psychopathology is the study of abnormal cognition, behaviour, and experiences which differs according to social norms and rests upon a number of constructs that are deemed to be the social norm at any particular era.
Biological psychopatholo ...
. Vulnerability can be a combination and interaction of genetic or acquired experiences. Vulnerability leads to putting up with something unpleasant and represents symptoms of various psychological disorders. Vulnerability predisposes individuals to a disorder, but does not initiate the disorder. Depending on the individual's subjective perception of an event, the diathesis leads to a certain psychological illness.
Psychological problems
Depression
![Dual Process Model](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/Dual_Process_Model.jpg)
Through several cognitive biases, selective
mood-congruent
Mood congruence is the consistency between a person's emotional state with the broader situations and circumstances being experienced by the persons at that time. By contrast, mood incongruence occurs when the individual's reactions or emotional st ...
cues become established over long intervals. Emotional
stimuli
A stimulus is something that causes a physiological response. It may refer to:
* Stimulation
** Stimulus (physiology), something external that influences an activity
** Stimulus (psychology), a concept in behaviorism and perception
* Stimulus (eco ...
matching the emotional concerns create an aggregate effect on symptoms related to
depression. Depression is associated with selective orientation. It prevents attention toward emotional cues that do not fit the internalized scheme to which the individual has become vulnerable, and leads to comorbid anxiety. When individuals who are prone to depression are asked to recall a specific event, they explain the general class of events (e.g., "The time when I was living with my parents").
Dual process model
Associative and reflective processing mechanisms apply when cognitive vulnerability is processed into depression. The dual process model is valid in social and personality psychology but is not adapted to clinical phenomena. Negative bias in self-assessment provides a foundation for a cognitive vulnerability to depression. Then a downward spiral forms to create forms of
dysphoria
Dysphoria (; ) is a profound state of unease or dissatisfaction. It is the semantic opposite of euphoria. In a psychiatric context, dysphoria may accompany depression, anxiety, or agitation.
In psychiatry
Intense states of distress and unea ...
. Negatively biased associative processing will maintain a dysphoric mood state. As the dysphoric mood escalates, cognitive resources necessary to combating dysphoria by reflective processing are depleted. Irrelevant tasks and intrusive thoughts come to mind when in a dysphoric mood, and cognitive resource depletion further contributes to mood escalation.
=Feedback loop
=
The feedback loop in the dual process model is between self referent cognition and dysphoria. The feedback loop establishes an inability to apply reflective processing to correct negative biases.
= Mood persistence
=
Postponing the reflective processes leads to mood persistence. The individual becomes accustomed to a state of dysphoria as they experience more and more negative mood states. Dysphoric moods create more associative processing for depressive vulnerable people by negative
cognitive bias
A cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment. Individuals create their own "subjective reality" from their perception of the input. An individual's construction of reality, not the objective input, m ...
es. When associative bias gets stronger, the bias becomes difficult to override. Ineffective reflective strategies lead to persistence of dysphoric moods.
A depressive episode as a vulnerability factor for depression
The likelihood of another depressive episode escalates with the number of previous episodes. A depressive episode by itself is a vulnerability factor. Each episode of depression makes it easier for the
neurotransmitter
A neurotransmitter is a signaling molecule secreted by a neuron to affect another cell across a synapse. The cell receiving the signal, any main body part or target cell, may be another neuron, but could also be a gland or muscle cell.
Neuro ...
system to become deregulated. A strong stressor is needed for the initializing first episode; however, subsequent episodes can be triggered by increasingly mild stressors. Contextual information develops such that small changes in mood are sufficient to activate vulnerability. Weakening and frequency of depressive episodes triggers the biological processes related to the initial episode. Depressive episodes are experienced as having no control over traumatic events. A depressive condition results in social rejection and lowered
self esteem
Self-esteem is confidence in one's own worth or abilities. Self-esteem encompasses beliefs about oneself (for example, "I am loved", "I am worthy") as well as emotional states, such as triumph, despair, pride, and shame. Smith and Mackie (2007) d ...
, leading to further depressive symptoms.
Schema models
Schemas in depression are formed in association with stressful events in childhood and condition the individual to respond in an abnormal manner to life experiences that recall those childhood traumas.
During childhood and adolescence, the individual who is prone to depression begins to match life situations with prototypes of specific stressful experiences from childhood. The cognitive vulnerability thus manifests itself.
Learned helplessness
Negative events during childhood lead the child to internalize negative events. Just as repeated positive experiences lead the child to develop a positive
self image
The self is an individual as the object of that individual’s own reflective consciousness. Since the ''self'' is a reference by a subject to the same subject, this reference is necessarily subjective. The sense of having a self—or ''selfhoo ...
and
optimism
Optimism is an attitude reflecting a belief or hope that the outcome of some specific endeavor, or outcomes in general, will be positive, favorable, and desirable. A common idiom used to illustrate optimism versus pessimism is a glass filled wi ...
regarding future events, negative events lead to the development of expectations of hopelessness or even
depression when the individual faces a stressful situation in the future.
Bipolar disorder
A study of people with
bipolar disorder
Bipolar disorder, previously known as manic depression, is a mental disorder characterized by periods of depression and periods of abnormally elevated mood that last from days to weeks each. If the elevated mood is severe or associated with ...
found that, compared with non-bipolar controls, they had significantly higher levels of dysfunctional attitudes such as
perfectionism and need for approval that increase their cognitive vulnerability to depression.
See also
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Animal cognition
Animal cognition encompasses the mental capacities of non-human animals including insect cognition. The study of animal conditioning and learning used in this field was developed from comparative psychology. It has also been strongly influenc ...
*
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)
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Cognitive bias
A cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment. Individuals create their own "subjective reality" from their perception of the input. An individual's construction of reality, not the objective input, m ...
*
Cognitive bias mitigation
Cognitive bias mitigation is the prevention and reduction of the negative effects of cognitive biases – unconscious, automatic influences on human judgment and decision making that reliably produce reasoning errors.
Coherent, comprehensive th ...
*
Cognitive bias modification
Cognitive bias modification (CBM) refers to procedures used in psychology that aim to directly change biases in Cognition, cognitive processes, such as biased attention toward threat (vs. benign) stimuli and biased Interpretive bias, interpretatio ...
*
Cognitive dissonance
In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is the perception of contradictory information, and the mental toll of it. Relevant items of information include a person's actions, feelings, ideas, beliefs, values, and things in the environment. ...
*
Cognitive distortion
A cognitive distortion is an exaggerated or irrational thought pattern involved in the onset or perpetuation of psychopathological states, such as depression and anxiety.
Cognitive distortions are thoughts that cause individuals to perceive rea ...
*
Cognitive linguistics
Cognitive linguistics is an interdisciplinary branch of linguistics, combining knowledge and research from cognitive science, cognitive psychology, neuropsychology and linguistics. Models and theoretical accounts of cognitive linguistics are con ...
*
Cognitive module
A cognitive module in cognitive psychology is a specialized tool or sub-unit that can be used by other parts to resolve cognitive tasks. It is used in theories of the modularity of mind and the closely related society of mind theory and was devel ...
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Cognitive space A cognitive model is an approximation of one or more cognitive processes in humans or other animals for the purposes of comprehension and prediction. There are many types of cognitive models, and they can range from box-and-arrow diagrams to a set o ...
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Cognitive style
Cognitive style or thinking style is a concept used in cognitive psychology to describe the way individuals think, perceive and remember information. Cognitive style differs from cognitive ability (or level), the latter being measured by aptitude ...
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Cognitive therapy (CT)
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Comparative cognition
Comparative cognition is the comparative study of the mechanisms and origins of cognition in various species, and is sometimes seen as more general than, or similar to, comparative psychology.
From a biological point of view, work is being done ...
*
Debiasing
References
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Cognitive disorders
Cognitive psychology
Vulnerability