Negative Emotional Action Termination (NEAT): Support for a Cognitive Mechanism Underlying Negative Urgency in Nonsuicidal Self-Injury☆,☆☆
Graphical abstract
Section snippets
Inhibitory Control In NSSI
Impulsive action results from impaired inhibitory control: a set of neurocognitive processes responsible for suppressing undesirable or inappropriate information and behavioral responses (Bari & Robbins, 2013). Inhibitory control includes three stages (Sebastian et al., 2013): (a) interference inhibition; (b) action restraint or suppression (early response inhibition); and (c) action cancellation or termination (late response inhibition). Interference inhibition refers to attentional/behavioral
Participants
Participants aged 18 + were recruited online via the university study pool and through advertisements posted in the community. The sample comprised a mix of local students and nonstudent adults seeking paid research opportunities. Interested individuals completed a web screening that collected demographic and psychiatric information. Eligibility criteria included English proficiency, no concussion history, and no impairments in motor ability, hearing, or vision. Participants provided informed
Self-report Measures
The average age of NSSI onset was 14.45 years (SD = 3.00). The most commonly endorsed method of NSSI was cutting/carving skin (57.78%), followed by scraping skin (35.56%), self-battery (26.67%), burning (24.44%), and picking skin (22.22%). Forty percent endorsed some other method (e.g., self-flagellation). Twenty-five participants (55.56%) endorsed multiple methods (two: n = 8, 17.78%; three: n = 9; 20%; four to six: n = 8; 17.78%). Four participants (8.89%) reported past-week NSSI episodes (M
Discussion
This study sought to extend previous work by clarifying the nature of emotional response inhibition in NSSI and how it relates to self-reported negative urgency. We replicated the previous association between NSSI and poor late response inhibition to negative affective images in the Emotional Stop-Signal Task, without group differences to neutral or positive images (Allen & Hooley, 2015). On each trial in this task, participants rapidly judge the valence of the presented image as positive or
Conflict of Interest Statement
The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest.
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2022, Journal of Affective DisordersCitation Excerpt :This might imply that the emotional component in e.g., executive function tasks is associated with deficits rather than cognitive performance per se. In fact, there is first evidence for the importance of ‘affective cognition’ in the context of NSSI (Allen and Hooley, 2019; Burke et al., 2021). Considerable development of neurocognition and in particular executive functioning alongside the remarkable neural changes during adolescence (Blakemore, 2008) increase vulnerability for mental health difficulties in young people (Heim and Binder, 2012; Leichsenring et al., 2011; Spatz Widom et al., 2007).
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We thank Rich McNally, Ph.D., Matt Nock, Ph.D., and Heather Schatten, Ph.D., for their comments on this manuscript, as well as Yael Goldstein for her assistance with data collection.
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Funding: This work was supported by a grant from Harvard University awarded to the first author [Roger Brown Memorial Fund] and the National Institutes of Health [R01MH108610].