Towards optimal treatment selection for borderline personality disorder patients (BOOTS): a study protocol for a multicenter randomized clinical trial comparing schema therapy and dialectical behavior therapy.

Background: Specialized evidence-based treatments have been developed and evaluated for borderline personality disorder (BPD), including Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) and Schema Therapy (ST). Individual differences in treatment response to both ST and DBT have been observed across studies, but the factors driving these differences are largely unknown. Understanding which treatment works best for whom and why remain central issues in psychotherapy research.

Perseveration causes automatization of checking behavior in obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Repeated checking leads to reductions in meta-memory (i.e., memory confidence, vividness and detail), and automatization of checking behavior (Dek, van den Hout, Giele, & Engelhard, 2014, 2015).

Ironic effects of compulsive perseveration.

Individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) exhibit perseverative behaviours, like checking, to reduce uncertainty, but perseveration paradoxically enhances uncertainty. It is unclear what mechanism might be responsible. We hypothesised that perseverative OC-like behaviour produces "semantic satiation" and interferes with the accessibility of meaning.

Reducing vividness and emotional intensity of recurrent "flashforwards" by taxing working memory: an analogue study.

Several studies have found that making eye movements while retrieving visual images about past negative events reduces their vividness and emotional intensity. A working memory account states that eye movements tax working memory and interfere with visual imagery, thus degrading images. This study examined whether eye movements also affect recurrent, intrusive visual images about potential future catastrophes ("flashforwards") in a sample of female undergraduates who had indicated on a screening-scale that they suffer from such intrusions.

Obsessive-compulsive-like reasoning makes an unlikely catastrophe more credible.

When obsessive-compulsive (OC) patients are confronted with disorder-relevant situations, they tend to reason in chains of small steps between the current situation and a highly improbable catastrophe. It was hypothesized that this type of "perseverative reasoning" would increase the subjective likelihood of the feared catastrophe. In an experiment with 63 healthy undergraduates, we tested whether OC-like perseverative reasoning induces feelings of uncertainty about a harmful outcome and makes this outcome more credible.

Repeated checking causes distrust in memory but not in attention and perception.

Repeated checking to reduce memory distrust seems to be counterproductive: it increases memory distrust. Obsessive-compulsive (OC) patients tend to be uncertain about other cognitive domains as well, like attention and perception. In an experiment with 70 healthy participants, we tested whether perseverative checking induces distrust not only in memory, but also in attention and perception.

Uncertainty about perception and dissociation after compulsive-like staring: time course of effects.

Repeated and compulsive-like checking reduces confidence in memory for the last check. Obsessive-compulsive (OC) patients are not only uncertain about memory, but may also be uncertain about perception, while this perceptual uncertainty may be associated with prolonged visual fixation on the object of uncertainty. It was reported earlier that, among healthy participants, prolonged staring at light bulbs or gas rings induces OC-like uncertainty about perception and feelings of dissociation [van den Hout, M.