Brooding and attentional control in processing self-encoded information: Evidence from a modified Garner task

The association between brooding and reflection, components of rumination, and attentional control, was examined using a novel executive attention task. Participants (n=156) self-encoded words from two semantic categories by providing autobiographical memories involving the words. They subsequently classified the self-encoded and non-self encoded (new) words into the two semantic categories. The degree to which stimuli self-encoding interfered with semantic classification was used as a measure of attentional control impairment. Whereas brooding was positively associated with attentional impairment, reflection was negatively associated with such impairment. These associations were not attributable to current depression levels or to differences in the nature (valence and meaningfulness) of the autobiographical memories generated by participants. These findings emphasise the importance of self-referential processing biases in rumination.