Maccallum Fiona, Sawday Simon, Rinck Mike, Bryant Richard A
School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Australia.
School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Australia.
J Behav Ther Exp Psychiatry. 2015 Sep;48:105-9. doi: 10.1016/j.jbtep.2015.02.010. Epub 2015 Mar 2.
Prolonged Grief (PG) is recognized as a post-bereavement syndrome that is associated with significant impairment. Although approach and avoidance tendencies have both been hypothesized to play key roles in maintaining PG symptoms, understanding of these relationships has been limited by a reliance on self-report methodology. This study applies an experimental paradigm to simultaneously investigate the relationship between PG severity and approach-avoidance behavioral tendencies.
Fifty-five bereaved individuals with and without PG completed a behavioral measure of approach and avoidance responding in which they pulled or pushed a joystick in response to grief-related, positive, negative and neutral images that appeared on a computer screen. Concurrent visual feedback created the illusion that the images were either approaching or receding from the participant. Half of the participants also received a prime designed to activate their grief prior to the task.
Irrespective of prime condition, PG participants pulled grief-related images more quickly than they pushed them. This difference was not observed in response to non-grief related images. Non PG participants showed no difference in their reaction times to grief-stimuli.
This study was undertaken in a nonclinical setting and the majority of participants had lost a loved one due to chronic illness. Future research with treatment-seeking populations and sudden loss will be needed to explore the generalizability of the findings.
The findings from this study provide preliminary evidence supporting models of PG that integrate approach and avoidance tendencies.
持续性悲伤（PG）被认为是一种丧亲后综合征，与严重的功能损害相关。尽管接近和回避倾向都被假设在维持PG症状中起关键作用，但对这些关系的理解一直受到依赖自我报告方法的限制。本研究应用实验范式同时探究PG严重程度与接近-回避行为倾向之间的关系。
55名有或无PG的丧亲个体完成了一项接近和回避反应的行为测量，在测量中他们根据出现在电脑屏幕上的与悲伤相关、积极、消极和中性的图像拉动或推动操纵杆。同时的视觉反馈营造出图像要么向参与者靠近要么远离的错觉。一半参与者在任务前还接受了旨在激活其悲伤情绪的启动刺激。
无论启动刺激条件如何，PG参与者拉动与悲伤相关图像的速度比推动它们的速度更快。对非悲伤相关图像的反应未观察到这种差异。非PG参与者对悲伤刺激的反应时间没有差异。
本研究是在非临床环境中进行的，大多数参与者因慢性病失去了亲人。未来需要对寻求治疗的人群和突然丧亲的情况进行研究，以探索这些发现的普遍性。
本研究结果提供了初步证据，支持整合接近和回避倾向的PG模型。
