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The hypothesis of cognitive theories of hypervigilance for signs of danger in Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) was tested with the emotional Stroop task. BPD patients (n = 15), Cluster C personality disorder (PD) patients (n = 12), and nonpatient controls (n = 15) diagnosed with SCID-I and SCID-II interviews color-named emotional and nonemotional words presented in three colors on a personal computer screen, first in a subliminal condition (words presented for a very short, individually calibrated time followed by a mask to prevent conscious recognition of the word) and then in a supraliminal condition. Four classes of negative words were used, including three classes of BPD-specific words (negative views of others, sexual abuse-related words, negative selfdescriptors) and one class of general negative words that was unrelated to BPD pathology. In contrast to the nonpatient controls, both BPD and Cluster C patients showed interference caused by supraliminally presented emotional words. There was no difference between the clinical groups and there was no evidence for specificity of the effect for certain stimulus classes. The subliminal Stroop failed to yield any significant effect. Results are interpreted as evidence for the presence of a relatively crude hypervigilance for any emotionally negative stimulus in both BPD and Cluster C PDs.
Beck, Freeman, and Associates' (1990) cognitive view of borderline personality disorder (BPD) hypothesizes three factors playing a major role in perpetuating the pathology: (a) core schemas of the self (as inherently unacceptable, powerless, and vulnerable) and others (as dangerous, malevolent, abusing, and rejecting); (b) dichotomous thinking (evaluating self and others in extreme opposing categories instead of shades of grey); and (c) hypervigilance, a heightened perceptivity for signs of danger. Attempts to test dichotomous thinking and the content of core schemas in BPD patients have been reported by Arntz, Dietzel, and Dreesen (1999); Brown, Beck, Grisham, and Butler (2000); and Veen and Arntz (2000). To the best of the present author's knowledge, no study has been published testing the assumed hypervigilance of BPD patients for signs of danger. The present study aimed at such a test. Well-known from anxiety research, the emotional Stroop task was chosen. In this experimental task, emotional and neutrals words are presented in different colors and the patient is instructed to name the color of the...