Takano Keisuke, Iijima Yudai, Sakamoto Shinji, Tanno Yoshihiko
College of Humanities and Sciences, Nihon University, 3-25-40, Sakurajosui Setagaya-ku, Tokyo 156-0045, Japan.
The University of Tokyo, 3-8-1, Komaba, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 153-8902, Japan.
J Behav Ther Exp Psychiatry. 2014 Dec;45(4):435-40. doi: 10.1016/j.jbtep.2014.05.003. Epub 2014 Jun 2.
Females are more likely to engage in the preoccupation of past negative experiences than males, which might contribute to their greater tendency toward depression. However, there is limited understanding regarding the cognitive basis for the negative autobiographical information processing of females. In the present study, we assessed the cognitive resources required for negative thinking, by using a novel dual-task paradigm that combined think-aloud and time-estimation tasks.
Fifty-three Japanese undergraduate students were asked to think aloud about personal past or future emotional episodes for a particular duration. In addition, they were asked to estimate the duration of their speech. Their estimates were compared to the actual time taken, and the errors were used as indices of cognitive burden during the speech task.
As compared to males, females exhibited greater judgment errors, particularly when thinking about their past negative experiences. This suggests that females allocate more attentional resources toward thinking about the past.
Participants could rehearse the task during the time reproduction phase, and the quality of the rehearsal and their memory capacity might have influenced the accuracy of their duration judgment.
Females tend to allocate more attentional resources than males to thinking about past negative episodes, which in turn might be associated with reduced availability of resources for central cognitive control processes such as inhibition of and switching away from processing of negative autobiographical information.
女性比男性更倾向于纠结过去的负面经历，这可能导致她们更易患抑郁症。然而，对于女性负面自传信息处理的认知基础，我们了解有限。在本研究中，我们通过使用一种结合出声思考和时间估计任务的新型双重任务范式，评估了负面思维所需的认知资源。
53名日本本科生被要求在特定时长内出声思考个人过去或未来的情感事件。此外，他们还被要求估计自己讲话的时长。将他们的估计与实际用时进行比较，误差用作言语任务中认知负担的指标。
与男性相比，女性表现出更大的判断误差，尤其是在思考过去的负面经历时。这表明女性在思考过去时会分配更多注意力资源。
参与者可能在时间再现阶段排练任务，排练质量和他们的记忆能力可能影响了他们时长判断的准确性。
女性比男性倾向于分配更多注意力资源来思考过去的负面事件，这反过来可能与诸如抑制和转移对负面自传信息处理等中央认知控制过程的资源可用性降低有关。
