Summary
Interpersonal difficulties, including problems in forming and maintaining relationships, figure prominently in Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). This paper addresses whether vulnerability to troubled interpersonal relationships in BPD may be related to biases in processing emotionally salient information. It considers the predictions that prominent models of BPD would make in terms of processing emotional information and it surveys the literature to establish whether BPD individuals are characterised by an attention bias, an interpretation bias, a memory bias, or all three. Taken together, the evidence suggests that BPD individuals preferentially attend to emotionally threatening information, but whether this is the result of hypervigilance towards threat, difficulty shifting attention away from threat, or both, is unclear since there is some ambiguity surrounding the methods employed. The range of studies examining an interpretation bias suggests that BPD individuals tend to appraise and interpret others as rejecting when the emotional information is ambiguous. Research on memory bias is still young and the findings too inconsistent to draw conclusions. The methodological limitations across the studies are considered and suggestions for further lines of enquiry are made. Establishing whether processing biases are associated with BPD is important as it may lead to a better understanding of what fuels unstable interpersonal relations. Cognitive biases may also provide clues that refine assessment and treatment.
Read More ↓Edition Statements
- Publication Date:2012
Thesis Information
- Degree:Clin.Psy.D.
- University:University of Birmingham
Publication Statements
- Language:eng
- Publication Date:2012
Edition Identifiers
- ethos:553222
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