Cognitive defusion and self-relevant negative thoughts: examining the impact of a ninety year old technique

Abstract

Cognitive defusion techniques are designed to reduce the functions of thoughts by altering the context in which they occur, rather than the attempting to alter the form, frequency, or situational sensitivity of the thoughts themselves. Applied technologies designed to produce cognitive defusion seem to lead to reductions in the believability of negative thoughts, but defusion techniques are generally only parts of complex packages and the role of defusion techniques per se is not yet known. The present study examined the impact of a cognitive defusion technique first described by Titchener nearly 90 years ago: rapidly repeating a single word. In series of eight single-case alternating treatment designs, this defusion technique was compared to a distraction task, and to a thought control task on reductions in the discomfort and believability of self-relevant negative thoughts. The cognitive defusion technique reduced both discomfort and believability more so than the comparison approaches. Control studies showed that the effect was probably not due to demand characteristics.

Fear Generalization in Humans: Systematic Review and Implications for Anxiety Disorder Research

“…Consequently, the ACT approach (Hayes, Stroshal, & Wilson, 2011), which arose out of the relational frame perspective on human learning, and focuses on the problem of loosening the dominance of verbal relations over the generalization process itself. For example, one technique known as "defusion" (Masuda, Hayes, Sackett, & Twohig, 2004) teaches the client how to perform other instrumental responses in the presence of fear stimuli and to thereby broaden the response functions of fear stimuli rather than narrow them. In effect, the multiplicity of response functions that get established for fear stimuli in the therapeutic setting (e.g., paying attention to its color, what the word sounds like, what it rhymes with, the feelings it creates in the body, etc.)…”

Verbal Establishing Stimuli: Testing the Motivative Effect of Stimuli in a Derived Relation with Consequences

“…Similarly, a variety of derived relations might be tested to see if only equivalence relations have the present effect. the present effect possibly can be used as a platform to study methods of diminishing the impact of verbal stimuli, as is commonly done clinically through such rFtinformed methods as cognitive defusion (e.g., see Masuda, Hayes, Sackett, & twohig, 2004).…”

Taxonomy as a contextualist views it

“…As an applied matter, this analysis suggests practically useful forms of contextual control that can reduce the impact of negative private events without necessarily changing their form or frequency, such as acceptance and cognitive defusion. This claim has, in turn, been empirically supported by outcome studies (see Hayes, Masuda, Bissett, Luoma, & Guerrero, 2004, for a review), process analyses (e.g., Bach & Hayes, 2002;Zettle & Hayes, 1986) and component analyses (e.g., Masuda, Hayes, Sackett, & Twohig, 2004;Gutiérrez, Luciano, Rodríguez, & Fink, in press).…”