Cognitive processes in autism: Repetitive thinking in autistic versus non-autistic adults

Repetitive and restricted behaviours are a core feature of autism, and cognition in autistic individuals may also be repetitive and restricted. We aimed to investigate the relationship between repetitive behaviours and repetitive thinking. We predicted that autistic people would experience more repetitive, perseverative, visual and negative cognition than controls. We predicted that repetitive thinking would be associated with repetitive behaviours in the autistic participants. We recruited autistic ( n = 54) and control ( n = 66) participants who completed measures of insistence on sameness and obsessive-compulsive behaviours. Participants then took part in 5 days of descriptive experiencing sampling, recording their thoughts when a random alarm sounded. Consistent with our hypothesis, autistic participants reported more repetitive thinking. Contrary with our other hypotheses, autistic participants reported equivalent frequency of perseveration, visual thoughts and negative thoughts to non-autistic participants. Moreover, participants who reported more obsessive thinking reported more repetitive behaviour (insistence on sameness), but there was no such relationship between repetitive thinking and behaviour. Autistic participants who reported more repeated thoughts in the descriptive experience sampling had significantly lower obsessive thinking scores. We conclude that anxiety focused cognitions may drive insistence on sameness behaviours, and that the relationship between repetitive cognition and behaviour is complex and warrants further investigation. Lay abstract A core feature of autism is the tendency to do the same activity or behaviour repetitively. We wanted to find out if autistic people also experience repetitive thinking, for example, having the same thoughts repeatedly. We thought that there would be a link between repetitive behaviour and repetitive thinking. We asked 54 autistic people and 66 non-autistic people to complete questionnaires measuring repetitive behaviours and obsessive thinking. Next, participants were trained by a researcher to record their thoughts using a structured paper form. They then completed 5 days of thought recording, which they did each time a random alarm sounded on their mobile phone. We found that autistic people had more repetitive thoughts than non-autistic people, but they did not report having more negative or visual thoughts compared with non-autistic people. Autistic people who had more repetitive thoughts during the 5 days of thought recording did not report more repetitive behaviour. However, autistic people who reported more obsessive thinking, for example, more negative and unwanted thoughts, also reported higher levels of repetitive behaviour. We conclude that some repetitive behaviours may be linked to anxiety and that more research is needed to better understand repetitive behaviours in autism.

Delayed Responses to Threatening Speech as a Function of Behavioural Inhibition

The present study investigates how trait anxiety affects speech processing, and whether anxiety has different processing consequences depending on speech informational properties. Participants listened to sentences in a go/no-go task where they were asked to respond to threat, which could be present in semantics, prosody or both. In one experiment they were asked to attend to prosody only and ignore semantics, and in the other, attend to semantics and ignore prosody. Trait anxiety was measured psychometrically using a behavioural inhibition scale questionnaire. In both studies, increased trait anxiety had substantial effects in slowing reaction times, but did not affect accuracy We suggest that increased anxiety induces participants to over-engage with threat, which is reflected in slower but not much less accurate responses. We adduce that phasic models of emotional language processing and anxiety can be bridged together by proposing a specific mechanism disrupting late phase processing, where orientation and/or deliberation processes occur. We propose that verbal repetitive thinking, as associated with anxious rumination and worry, can fulfil this disruptive role.

Self-compassion and repetitive thinking in relation to depressive mood and fear of the future

The coronavirus pandemic has had a high impact on mental health. Also, semiprofessional football players are strongly affected by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) because training during the lockdown phase has been forbidden. It was the primary goal of this study to investigate if those athletes suffer from a depressive mood and fear of the future. Furthermore, the question was asked whether the psychological variables of self-compassion and repetitive thinking are related to this. A total of 55 semiprofessional football players completed a demographic questionnaire with questions related to depressive mood and fear of the future, and a rumination-, worry- and self-compassion scale. The results show an association between the negative scale of self-compassion and depressive mood as well as fear of the future. Whereas depressive mood was predicted by self-compassion, fear of the future was only indirectly predicted by self-compassion by the mediating effects of repetitive thinking. Also, in semiprofessional football, self-compassion interventions might be a useful tool in difficult times.

Content and Themes of Repetitive Thinking in Postnatal First-Time Mothers

Repetitive thinking (RT) predicts and maintains depression and anxiety, yet the role of RT in the perinatal context has been under-researched. Further, the content and themes that emerge during RT in the perinatal period have been minimally investigated. We recruited an online community sample of women who had their first baby within the past 12 months (n = 236). Participants completed a battery of self-report questionnaires which included four open-ended questions about the content of their RT. Responses to the latter were analyzed using an inductive thematic analysis approach. Participants reported RT about a range of unexpected emotional responses to becoming a new mother, impact on their sleep and cognitive functioning, as well as the impact on their identity, sense of self, lifestyle, achievements, and ability to function. RT was commonly experienced in first-time mothers, and the themes that emerged conveyed an overall sense of discrepancy between expectations and reality, as well as adjustment to profound change. By providing insight into the content of RT in new mothers, the findings of our study have scope to inform the content of interventions that seek to prevent and treat postnatal mental health problems, particularly those which target key psychological processes such as RT.