IMAGES AND DOUBTS IN INTRUSIVE COGNITIVE ACTIVITY

Intrusive thoughts are variously reported as images, thoughts, doubts, impulses etc. Recent accounts of emotional processing make important distinctions between cognitive activity in verbal form and images. The comparison of verbal intrusions and images was made on archival data about intrusive cognitions from 628 university students. Images and do ubts (a verbal form) occurring together were perceived as more difficu lt to dismiss than either images or doubts alone. In addition, images and doubts together were more frequent, more probable, and required mo re effort to counter than images alone. Likewise, images and doubts to gether and doubts alone were more worrisome and more frequently trigge red by various stimuli than images alone. These results suggest that c ognitive intrusions identified as a mixture of doubts and images are q ualitatively different and more troublesome than those identified as e ither doubts or images. These findings are discussed in terms of curre nt accounts of emotional processing.