Smith, Alicia J;
Bisby, James A;
Dercon, Quentin;
Bevan, Anna;
Kigar, Stacey L;
Lynall, Mary-Ellen;
Dalgleish, Tim;
... Nord, Camilla L; + view all
(2024)
Hot metacognition: poorer metacognitive efficiency following acute but not traumatic stress.
Translational Psychiatry
, 14
(1)
, Article 133. 10.1038/s41398-024-02840-z.
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Abstract
Aberrations to metacognition-the ability to reflect on and evaluate self-performance-are a feature of poor mental health. Theoretical models of post-traumatic stress disorder propose that following severe stress or trauma, maladaptive metacognitive evaluations and appraisals of the event drive the development of symptoms. Empirical research is required in order to reveal whether disruptions to metacognition cause or contribute to symptom development in line with theoretical accounts, or are simply a consequence of ongoing psychopathology. In two experiments, using hierarchical Bayesian modelling of metacognition measured in a memory recognition task, we assessed whether distortions to metacognition occur at a state-level after an acute stress induction, and/or at a trait-level in a sample of individuals experiencing intrusive memories following traumatic stress. Results from experiment 1, an in-person laboratory-based experiment, demonstrated that heightened psychological responses to the stress induction were associated with poorer metacognitive efficiency, despite there being no overall change in metacognitive efficiency from pre- to post-stress (N = 27). Conversely, in experiment 2, an online experiment using the same metamemory task, we did not find evidence of metacognitive alterations in a transdiagnostic sample of patients with intrusive memory symptomatology following traumatic stress (N = 36, compared to 44 matched controls). Our results indicate a relationship between state-level psychological responses to stress and metacognitive alterations. The lack of evidence for pre- to post-stress differences in metamemory illustrates the importance for future studies to reveal the direction of this relationship, and consequently the duration of stress-associated metacognitive impairments and their impact on mental health.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Hot metacognition: poorer metacognitive efficiency following acute but not traumatic stress |
| Location: | United States |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1038/s41398-024-02840-z |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41398-024-02840-z |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| Keywords: | Humans, Metacognition, Bayes Theorem, Mental Health, Phenotype, Psychopathology |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Division of Psychiatry UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Division of Psychiatry > Epidemiology and Applied Clinical Research |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10188896 |
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