Abstract
Childhood abuse is an important precursor of borderline personality disorder (BPD) and antisocial personality disorder (ASPD). The current study compared the emotional reactivity to abuse-related stress of these patients on a direct and an indirect level. Changes in self-reported affect and schema modes, psychophysiology and reaction time based cognitive associations were assessed following confrontation with an abuse-related film fragment in patients with BPD (n = 45), ASPD (n = 21), Cluster C personality disorder (n = 46) and non-patient controls (n = 36). Results indicated a hyperresponsivity of BPD-patients on self-reported negative affect and schema modes, on some psychophysiological indices and on implicit cognitive associations. The ASPD-group was comparable to the BPD group on implicit cognitions but did not show self-reported and physiological hyper-reactivity. These findings suggest that BPD and ASPD-patients are alike in their implicit cognitive abuse-related stress reactivity, but can be differentiated in their self-reported and physiological response patterns.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 116-124 |
Number of pages | 9 |
Journal | Behaviour Research and Therapy |
Volume | 48 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Feb 2010 |
Keywords
- Abuse-related stress induction
- Traumatic stimuli
- Direct assessment
- Schema modes
- Indirect assessment
- Psychophysiology
- Emotional reactivity
- SC-IAT
- IMPLICIT ASSOCIATION TEST
- CHILDHOOD MALTREATMENT
- PSYCHOPATHY
- ABANDONMENT
- REACTIVITY
- DIAGNOSES
- MEMORIES