Susceptibility to Distraction by Social Cues in Borderline Personality Disorder

Background/Aims: Individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD) are highly sensitive to social rejection and show alterations in social perception. Increased susceptibility to social cues in patients with BPD might interfere with executive functions that play an important role in goal-directed behavior. The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of task-irrelevant (neutral vs. negatively arousing) social cues on working memory performance in BPD patients compared to healthy controls (HC). Methods: 28 unmedicated female BPD patients and 28 female HC (matched for age and education) performed a Sternberg item recognition task, while being distracted by neutral versus negatively arousing pictures from the International Affective Picture System (interpersonal scenes) and the Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces Set (faces). Additionally, self-ratings of aversive inner tension were assessed and correlated with task performance. Results: Compared to HC, BPD patients showed significantly impaired accuracy after distraction by negatively arousing stimuli (both scenes and faces) and neutral faces (but not neutral scenes). Significant negative correlations between overall accuracy and self-reported aversive inner tension were observed in BPD patients. Conclusions: Findings of the present study suggest increased susceptibility to distracting (negatively arousing) social cues in individuals with BPD, which might interfere with cognitive functioning.

[1]  Christoph Berger,et al.  Recognition of facial affect in Borderline Personality Disorder. , 2008, Journal of personality disorders.

[2]  Jacob Cohen.  Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences , 1969, The SAGE Encyclopedia of Research Design.

[3]  K. Lyons-Ruth,et al.  BPD's interpersonal hypersensitivity phenotype: a gene-environment-developmental model. , 2008, Journal of personality disorders.

[4]  H. Flor,et al.  Emotional learning during dissociative states in borderline personality disorder. , 2009, Journal of psychiatry & neuroscience : JPN.

[5]  P. Lang,et al.  International Affective Picture System (IAPS): Instruction Manual and Affective Ratings (Tech. Rep. No. A-4) , 1999 .

[6]  Qingyang Li,et al.  Emotional perception: Meta-analyses of face and natural scene processing , 2011, NeuroImage.

[7]  M. Lenzenweger,et al.  Executive neurocognition, memory systems, and borderline personality disorder. , 2006, Clinical psychology review.

[8]  A. Beck,et al.  An inventory for measuring depression. , 1961, Archives of general psychiatry.

[9]  U. Ebner-Priemer,et al.  Development and Psychometric Characteristics of the DSS-4 as a Short Instrument to Assess Dissociative Experience during Neuropsychological Experiments , 2009, Psychopathology.

[10]  Lisa M. DeBruine,et al.  The many faces of research on face perception , 2011, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[11]  S. Herpertz,et al.  Emotion recognition in borderline personality disorder-a review of the literature. , 2009, Journal of personality disorders.

[12]  G. McCarthy,et al.  Brain Systems Mediating Cognitive Interference by Emotional Distraction , 2006, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[13]  Jeff Davies.  Reproduced with the permission of Bird life Australia and , 2013 .

[14]  S. Herpertz,et al.  Effects of emotional stimuli on working memory processes in male criminal offenders with borderline and antisocial personality disorder , 2013, The world journal of biological psychiatry : the official journal of the World Federation of Societies of Biological Psychiatry.

[15]  Kristin Prehn,et al.  Neuronal Correlates of Cognitive Reappraisal in Borderline Patients with Affective Instability , 2011, Biological Psychiatry.

[16]  A. Ruocco,et al.  Facial emotion recognition in borderline personality disorder , 2012, Psychological Medicine.

[17]  M. Manosevitz,et al.  High-Speed Scanning in Human Memory , 2022 .

[18]  P. Links,et al.  Borderline personality disorder and childhood trauma: Evidence for a causal relationship , 2009, Current psychiatry reports.

[19]  Donald Neth,et al.  Emotion perception in emotionless face images suggests a norm-based representation. , 2009, Journal of vision.

[20]  B. Crespi,et al.  The borderline empathy paradox: evidence and conceptual models for empathic enhancements in borderline personality disorder. , 2013, Journal of personality disorders.

[21]  R. Baer,et al.  Emotion-related cognitive processes in borderline personality disorder: a review of the empirical literature. , 2012, Clinical psychology review.

[22]  M. Linehan,et al.  Facial expression recognition ability among women with borderline personality disorder: implications for emotion regulation? , 1999, Journal of personality disorders.

[23]  P. Spinhoven,et al.  Hydrocortisone reduces emotional distracter interference in working memory , 2009, Psychoneuroendocrinology.

[24]  Antonia S. New,et al.  Borderline Personality Disorder Recent research findings have contributed to an improved understanding and treatment of borderline personality , 2013 .

[25]  Sven Barnow,et al.  Hypersensitivity in Borderline Personality Disorder during Mindreading , 2012, PloS one.

[26]  C. Schmahl,et al.  Influence of emotional distraction on working memory performance in borderline personality disorder , 2012, Psychological Medicine.

[27]  M. Bohus,et al.  Social Interaction in Borderline Personality Disorder , 2013, Current Psychiatry Reports.

[28]  D. Lundqvist,et al.  Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces , 2015 .

[29]  J. Paris.  Estimating the prevalence of personality disorders in the community. , 2010, Journal of personality disorders.

[30]  T. McGlashan,et al.  Childhood maltreatment associated with adult personality disorders: findings from the Collaborative Longitudinal Personality Disorders Study. , 2004, Journal of personality disorders.

[31]  S. Herpertz,et al.  Enhanced Detection of Emotional Facial Expressions in Borderline Personality Disorder , 2012, Psychopathology.

[32]  E. Bernstein,et al.  Development, reliability, and validity of a dissociation scale. , 1986, The Journal of nervous and mental disease.

[33]  Alexander L. Chapman,et al.  Psychometric Properties of the Borderline Symptom List (BSL) , 2007, Psychopathology.

[34]  P. Kirsch,et al.  Affect Regulation and Pain in Borderline Personality Disorder: A Possible Link to the Understanding of Self-Injury , 2010, Biological Psychiatry.

[35]  C. Lejuez,et al.  Heightened sensitivity to facial expressions of emotion in borderline personality disorder. , 2006, Emotion.

[36]  Hu Cheng,et al.  Neural correlates of emotion processing in borderline personality disorder , 2009, Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging.

[37]  C. Lejuez,et al.  Borderline personality disorder and emotional responding: a review of the research literature. , 2008, Clinical psychology review.

[38]  M. Linehan,et al.  A biosocial developmental model of borderline personality: Elaborating and extending Linehan's theory. , 2009, Psychological bulletin.

[39]  Oliver T Wolf,et al.  Stress shifts brain activation towards ventral 'affective' areas during emotional distraction. , 2012, Social cognitive and affective neuroscience.

[40]  E. Leibing,et al.  Borderline personality disorder , 2011, The Lancet.

[41]  Anna Weinberg,et al.  I see people: The presence of human faces impacts the processing of complex emotional stimuli , 2012, Social neuroscience.

[42]  J. Fahrenberg,et al.  Aversive tension in patients with borderline personality disorder: a computer‐based controlled field study , 2005, Acta psychiatrica Scandinavica.

[43]  L. Lam,et al.  Neurocognitive profiles of people with borderline personality disorder , 2013, Current opinion in psychiatry.

[44]  A. Chaudhuri,et al.  The Many Faces of a Neutral Face: Head Tilt and Perception of Dominance and Emotion , 2003 .

[45]  N. Landrø,et al.  Pathological dissociation and neuropsychological functioning in borderline personality disorder , 2009, Acta psychiatrica Scandinavica.

[46]  D. Wolke,et al.  Bullied by peers in childhood and borderline personality symptoms at 11 years of age: a prospective study. , 2012, Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines.