4 - (SYM 87) Targeting Schema Change via Autobiographical Memory Reconstruction: Implications for Mental Health Interventions

Negative self-schemas (i.e., maladaptive views of the self) are at the core of many debilitating mental disorders, including anxiety, illustrating the importance for developing interventions that can change and update schemas. Memory research has documented a strong link between schemas and autobiographical memories. Schemas emerge from autobiographical memories and schemas can be potentially altered through exposure to autobiographical events that challenge or are incongruent with a schema. Neurocognitive models of autobiographical memory demonstrate how past events can be constructed in a variety of ways, such that a person can mentally simulate these events with different combination of experienced details and even include new and hypothetical elements. Based on this understanding, we propose that reconstructing autobiographical memories that are linked to negative schemas in a manner that is incongruent with the expectations of a schema can be used to alter maladaptive self-views. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a between-subject study in which English-speaking undergraduate participants (mean age = 23 years, 48% female) with varying degrees of social anxiety as determined by the Social Phobia Inventory (SPIN; Connor et al., 2000). All participants first recalled and described negative autobiographical memories, those linked to maladaptive self-schemas in social situations, and then provided estimates of negative and positive schemas of the self and other people (Brief Core Schema Scale, BCSS; Fowler et al., 2006). Next, half of the participants reconstructed and described these memories with a positive outcome, promoting schema incongruent learning, and the other half reconstructed these memories with new perceptual details which did not promote schema incongruent learning. Participants then completed the BCSS. Only the group that engaged in schema-incongruent learning when reconstructing autobiographical memories had a significant reduction in estimates of negative self-schemas, increased estimates of positive self-schemas yet not change to estimates of the schema of others. This impact of reconstructing memories with schema-incongruent outcome held after a week delay. These data serve as foundational knowledge for understanding how to effectively target autobiographical memory in a way to improve maladaptive schemas in mental health disorders and thus improving current intervention techniques.