GRIP*TT - Generalization Research in lll health and Psychopathology: transdiagnostic processes and transfer of knowledge.

Depression, anxiety, and ill health, such as chronic pain, are amongst the most frequent clinical and health problems. These conditions all have a huge impact on peoples quality of life, and bring along great socio-economic costs. Prior research in this area has typically studied specific problems and/or specific pathological mechanisms. In contrast to such a selective approach, the present research program will apply a transdiagnostic perspective to the study of crucial psychological mechanisms involved in the aetiology, maintenance and re-occurrence of the above mentioned psychological and health-related problems. Within this innovative generic framework of a transdiagnostic model, the proposed research program will target the issue of generalization and the mechanisms involved. Generalization refers to the observation that problematic emotional states and problem behaviours generalize/extend to other stimuli and situations than those in response to which the initial problematic feelings and behaviours occurred. In fact without generalization not much psychopathology would evolve. Take, for example, a person who gets bitten by an aggressive brown dog. It is well possible that this person not only develops fear for this specific dog, but for all dogs,and for streets and other places where dogs could show up. In that case, one would speak of dog phobia. The interesting observation is that when learning experiences are involved, fear is most often not limited to the original object or situation, but swiftly generalizes to other objects or situations. If fear would have been restricted to this one brown dog, the person would probably not experience this as a handicapping disorder. In sum, generalization constitutes a central mechanism in the development of psychopathology and health related problems. This is not restricted to anxiety disorders. For instance, it is known that people suffering from chronic pain avoid certain movements, and that generalized forms of this avoidance can lead to high rates of immobility. In depression, one negative event often impacts the experience of a whole situation. Given the centrality of generalization in the development of psychopathology, it is remarkable that empirical work and theorizing on generalization are virtually absent. Therefore, a central focus of the program will be the study of processes of generalization in the areas of learning mechanisms, attentional and memory processes, interpersonal and psychobiological mechanisms. Among other things we will study (a) learning mechanisms of acquired equivalence, (b) the influence of overgeneral autobiographical memory and overgeneral encoding, (c) worry and the forgetting of stimulus attributes, (d) contextual learning, (e) rumination and cognitive distortions, (f) affective and perceptual categorizations, and (g) the interactions between these mechanisms that would otherwise be typically studied in isolation. Other studies will manipulate or measure motivational, social and psychobiological factors. Based on experimental work, we want to build an overarching model of generalization and translate this knowledge to the development and optimization of clinical interventions.

Keywords:Psychopathology

Disciplines:Biological and physiological psychology, General psychology, Other psychology and cognitive sciences