Can cognitive biases during pregnancy predict future development of postpartum depression and PTSD?

Postpartum Depression and Postpartum Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder are psychiatric conditions that can result in severe problems. About 10-15% of pregnant women will develop these disorders after delivery.

We developed a battery of sensitive cognitive tasks to examine whether cognitive biases during pregnancy can predict future development of postpartum depression and PTSD.

This knowledge may shed light on the mechanisms underlying adaptive vs. maladaptive biased processing patterns during pregnancy and ultimately lead to the development of individually tailored preventive treatment. For more information about the research click here.

Interpersonal distance estimation bias: a new avenue for understanding approach-avoidance

People closely monitor and appropriately regulate their interpersonal space to obtain a comfortable distance while interacting with others. In this line of studies, we examined the perception of the interpersonal distance in populations that are prone to difficulties in regulating the interpersonal distance adaptevelly- in social anxiety disorder, and in autism spectrum disorder. Our results indicated that the way in which the interpersonal distance is perceived, can predict the actual distance the individual would prefer to maintain from others. For example, individuals with social anxiety perceive the interpersonal distance as shorter, which, in turn, is associated with their preference for greater interpersonal distance from the social partner. We use novel implicit and explicit measures for distance perception and regulation that were developed in the lab. These tasks are both computerized and simulating a real-life scenario. Current line of work is examining the role of the distance estimation bias in regulating interpersonal distance among individuals with autism.

Relevant Literature:

Givon‐Benjio, N., Oren‐Yagoda, R., Aderka, I. M., & Okon‐Singer, H. (2020). Biased distance estimation in social anxiety disorder: A new avenue for understanding avoidance behavior. Depression and Anxiety, 37(12), 1243-1252.

Givon-Benjio, N., & Okon-Singer, H. (2020). Biased Estimations of Interpersonal Distance in Non-Clinical Social Anxiety. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 102171.

Does Statistical Learning Play a Role in Emotional Processing?

The research focuses on visual statistical learning of emotional information, that is, how humans learn to perceive statistical regularities of emotional stimuli in their environment. Current studies examine how negative valence influences the learning of temporal patterns, how statistical learning modulates attentional biases toward threatening stimuli, and age differences in the statistical learning of emotional stimuli.