Biased social cognition toward an enhanced processing of negative social information might contribute to instability in interpersonal relationships. Such interpersonal dysfunctions are important for the understanding of several mental disorders, among them borderline personality disorder (BPD). To experimentally test enhanced memory retrieval of negative social information, using a newly developed variant of a looking-at-nothing paradigm, 45 BPD patients and 36 healthy women learned positive and negative personality traits of different target persons. In a translational memory test, participants were asked to use the learned information to evaluate statements about the target person. In addition to behavioral measures of memory performance, we investigated eye gaze patterns to decompose memory retrieval processes. We hypothesized that BPD patients would retrieve negative as compared to positive person information more accurately than healthy controls, and show increased eye gaze toward spatial locations where negative information was provided during the learning phase. Results pointed to a more accurate retrieval of negative person attributes in the patient group as compared with healthy controls, thereby corroborating a negativity bias in social cognition in an exemplary sample of patients with interpersonal problems. Interestingly, the observed negativity bias for person memory was associated with BPD severity, stronger expectancies to be rejected by others, and social detachment. No group differences regarding eye fixation behavior were found. We propose that enhanced retrieval of negative person information might be associated with dysfunctional cognitive schemas as well as reduced behavioral trust, and be of relevance for mental disorders characterized by interpersonal difficulties. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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增强对边缘性人格障碍中负面社会信息的记忆。

偏向于加强对负面社会信息的处理的社会认知可能会导致人际关系的不稳定。这种人际功能障碍对于理解几种精神障碍很重要，其中包括边缘型人格障碍 (BPD)。为了通过实验测试对负面社会信息的增强记忆检索，使用新开发的无视范式变体，45 名 BPD 患者和 36 名健康女性学习了不同目标人的积极和消极人格特征。在翻译记忆测试中，参与者被要求使用学到的信息来评估关于目标人的陈述。除了记忆性能的行为测量外，我们还研究了眼睛注视模式以分解记忆检索过程。我们假设与健康对照相比，与积极的人信息相比，BPD 患者会更准确地检索消极的人信息，并显示出更多的目光注视着在学习阶段提供了消极信息的空间位置。结果表明，与健康对照组相比，患者组对负面人物属性的检索更准确，从而证实了在有人际关系问题的示例患者样本中社会认知中的消极偏见。有趣的是，观察到的对人的记忆的消极偏见与 BPD 的严重程度、被他人拒绝的强烈期望以及社会疏离有关。没有发现关于眼睛注视行为的组间差异。我们提出，增强对负面人物信息的检索可能与功能失调的认知图式以及行为信任的降低有关，并且与以人际交往困难为特征的精神障碍有关。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2020 APA，保留所有权利）。