Negativity is Key for Understanding the Interplay between Rumination’s Features, Attention Control, and their Ever-changing Nature: A Temporal Network Approach

Abstract

Rumination is a transdiagnostic correlate and risk factor for mental disorders. However, few studies have explored rumination and its components in everyday life, or their associations with other transdiagnostic processes, such as deficits in attention control, which may be an explanatory mechanism or consequence of rumination. Inspired by the Nolen-Hoeksema’s operationalization of rumination, we investigated the associations between five features of rumination and attention control. Forty participants answered six items four times per day over a two-week period. Using a multilevel vector autoregressive approach, we computed three networks representing temporal, contemporaneous, and between-subjects associations. The results showed that negativity of thoughts temporally drives all other features of rumination and predicts diminished attention control. Negativity was the only feature negatively associated with attention control within the same time point, emphasizing negativity as a driving force of rumination and as a potent pathway in the interplay between rumination’s features and attention control.