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New paper - “Inducing positive involuntary mental imagery in everyday life: an experimental investigation” now published in Memory! (with @MarcellaWoud and @WurtzFelix) 1/ https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/ZHTQUBPUPDUUYDGZQ3JH/full?target=10.1080/09658211.2020.1822413
(And here is the preprint version for once the 50 free author copies run out: ) 2/ https://psyarxiv.com/mp9cw/
I am particularly fond of this paper, for two reasons that are, naturally, best explained via the medium of an overlong Twitter thread. 3/
Reason 1: This was the first study I set up after moving to @ruhrunibochum from @mrccbu. The first study in a new place – especially a new country - takes a disproportionately huge amount of work to set up and get going. 4/
Inspired by my involvement in the Open Science Committee @mrccbu, in setting up my own research I was also thinking about how best to do this within the framework of #OpenScience. 5/
This included re-programming all my computer tasks from scratch so they could be in free-to-use software (apologies for the code – I started with good intentions re: quality of coding and annotations, but you know how it goes…) 6/
This was also the study where I switched from SPSS to #RStats (again, this may help explain the not entirely elegant nature of my analysis scripts…) 7/
The time period from initial planning to submission of this study was quite a …busy… one, often feeling like a continuous scrabble to stay afloat. 8/
(It included the birth of two daughters, acquisition of a new nationality, and many other life events too numerous to enumerate here). 9/
(Then came a pandemic). 10/
So, although this is most likely (hopefully) not the most important of my publications, it feels like a milestone, and very good to have it finally out. 11/
Reason 2: The concept of the study stems almost entirely from a chance comment made in late 2007 by a participant in my very first published study. 12/
I was in the early stages of collecting data for my DClinPsy project at @oxicpt (later published here: ) 13/ https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/acp.1680
We wanted to try out using a mental-imagery based computerized “positive interpretation training” (as we called it then) amongst people with depression for the first time. 14/
The idea was that via repeatedly imagining positive resolutions for ambiguous scenarios (448 in total), a more positive interpretation bias would be trained. 15/
We anticipated difficulties, and did this as a single case series, the idea being that we could pick up problems with the training and adapt it for subsequent participants as we went along; 16/
by the end of the case series we would (hopefully) have something ready for testing in a larger study vs. a control condition. 17/
So, when each participant finished I went through a semi-structured interview with them to try to get feedback that we could use to improve things. 18/
The second participant came back in with a huge drop in her depression symptoms (in fact, they went from 27 to 4 on the BDI-II over the 3-week pre-training to follow-up period). 19/
During the interview she was quite positive about the training, and said she had found it helpful. My last question was always “Is there anything else you’d like to mention?”. 20/
She thought for a moment, then said “Well, there was this one thing…” 21/
She went on to describe experiencing the training scenarios she’d imagined at the computer popping into her head during the day when she was in similar situations, and influencing her mood, expectations and behaviour. 22/
e.g. prompting her to sit with people she didn’t know very well at the canteen at lunch and being quite talkative. 23/
This was really not on our radar at all as a potential treatment mechanism, but I then asked subsequent participants about it and several of those experiencing huge BDI-II reductions also reported a similar thing. 24/
I found it fascinating, but having finished my DClinPsy I started working as a clinical psychologist in a CMHT in Oxford and had no particular future research plans. 25/
I then had the opportunity to enter research towards the end of 2010, taking on the job of running a proper RCT of the (now termed) imagery CBM (cognitive bias modification) intervention, published here: 26/ https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2167702614560746
(this was quite a step up – my previous study had 7 participants, this one had 150, or 252 if you include everyone we did face-to-face eligibility/diagnostic assessments with) 27/
Anyway, I was still thinking about this weird phenomenon of involuntary memories of the training scenarios. 28/
Within the trial itself we didn’t have scope to look into this, but I liked talking to the participants once they’d finished the study and finding out about their experiences. 29/
Again, it seemed to me (although I would be biased here) that many people experiencing huge drops in depression symptoms were experiencing these involuntary memories of the training scenarios in their daily lives. 30/
I found it quite compelling as a potential treatment mechanism, so we fleshed this out a bit more using an illustrative case study: 31/ https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jclp.22455
(and in fact, when talking to Alishia Williams about the trials she was running in Sydney she also reported some participants mentioning a similar experience). 32/
But still, it was just anecdote, so once I had the chance to start setting up my own studies the first thing I wanted to do was to see if we could actually record these kinds of involuntary memories. 33/
Hence this study – a starting point for trying to at least document this phenomenon formally before going on to explore it further (hopefully). 34/
And this is one reason I find it so interesting: If it is the case that people with depression can experience involuntary memories of these positive training scenarios… 35/
…and these have the kind of impact on their mood, cognition, and behaviour, as described anecdotally, this has very interesting implications for trying to improve the imagery CBM as an intervention. 36/
i.e. if we conceptualise it as being a method for implanting positive images into people’s memories, which can then pop back over the course of their everyday lives, how can we maximise this happening? 37/
We don’t know yet, but it would probably take us down a very different route compared to trying to maximise the effect of the training in changing a generalized interpretation bias. 38/
Of course, we have to be open to the possibility that it’s just a curio of no great relevance, but at the moment it seems worth pursuing. 39/
Anyway, as a final point, for me it also illustrates how some of the most interesting research findings are the ones you aren’t looking for. 40/
The patterns of scores on your outcome measures are (to a great extent) constrained by your pre-conceptions; 41/
what your participants tell you when given the chance to talk is not – so talk to your participants, and keep your ears and mind open! 42/ end
