Training to Inhibit Negative Content Affects Memory and Rumination

Oversampled and undersolved: Depressive rumination from an active inference perspective

Rumination is a widely recognized cognitive deviation in depression. Despite the recognition, researchers have struggled to explain why patients cannot disengage from the process, although it depresses their mood and fails to lead to effective problem-solving. We rethink rumination as repetitive but unsuccessful problem-solving attempts. Appealing to an active inference account, we suggest that adaptive problem-solving is based on the generation, evaluation, and performance of candidate policies that increase an organism's knowledge of its environment. We argue that the problem-solving process is distorted during rumination. Specifically, rumination is understood as engaging in excessive yet unsuccessful oversampling of policy candidates that do not resolve uncertainty. Because candidates are sampled from policies that were selected in states resembling one's current state, "bad" starting points (e.g., depressed mood, physical inactivity) make the problem-solving process vulnerable for generating a ruminative "halting problem". This problem leads to high opportunity costs, learned helplessness and diminished overt behavior. Besides reviewing evidence for the conceptual paths of this model, we discuss its neurophysiological correlates and point towards clinical implications.

The role of attention control in complex real-world tasks

Working memory capacity is an important psychological construct, and many real-world phenomena are strongly associated with individual differences in working memory functioning. Although working memory and attention are intertwined, several studies have recently shown that individual differences in the general ability to control attention is more strongly predictive of human behavior than working memory capacity. In this review, we argue that researchers would therefore generally be better suited to studying the role of attention control rather than memory-based abilities in explaining real-world behavior and performance in humans. The review begins with a discussion of relevant literature on the nature and measurement of both working memory capacity and attention control, including recent developments in the study of individual differences of attention control. We then selectively review existing literature on the role of both working memory and attention in various applied settings and explain, in each case, why a switch in emphasis to attention control is warranted. Topics covered include psychological testing, cognitive training, education, sports, police decision-making, human factors, and disorders within clinical psychology. The review concludes with general recommendations and best practices for researchers interested in conducting studies of individual differences in attention control.

An Analysis of the Relationship between the Modified Theory of Planned Behavior and Leisure Rumination of Korean Employees

An increasing trend among employees has been to engage in leisure activities, which has been proven to be an effective method of overcoming work stress. As a result, employees are doing "Other Things" (i.e., non-work activities) as a way to relieve stress. Based on the existing studies on rumination, this study considered doing "Other Things" as a new concept of "leisure rumination" and identified its influence as a means to help employees recover from work stress. Accordingly, this study provided basic data on the meaning of leisure activities and leisure rumination in office workers who suffer from failure to recover from work stress using partial least squares structural equation modeling. This study was conducted on employees residing in the Seoul metropolitan area and the Gyeongsang-do district in November 2019 through a structured questionnaire. The results of this study verified the significance of leisure rumination and the possibility of it being utilized as a practical research tool for leisure activities. Our findings may be considered when planning interventions for work addiction and burnout through leisure rumination.