Author ORCID Identifier:

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7197-4169

Date of Graduation

9-2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD)

Degree Level

Graduate

Department

Psychological Science

Advisor/Mentor

Judah, Matt

Committee Member

Jessica Fugitt

Second Committee Member

Lindsay Ham

Keywords

brooding rumination; explicit emotional processing; implicit emotional processing; inhibitory control; suicidal ideation

Abstract

Suicide is the tenth leading cause of death in the United States, and suicidal ideations (SI; thinking, considering, or planning suicide) are a strong predictor of suicide attempts. Prior literature describes inhibitory control as an important facet of regulating negative thoughts, and studies suggest that inhibitory control deficits and engagement in brooding rumination are risk factors of SI. Recent studies have found implicit cognitive markers of suicidality suggesting that level of processing may variably be linked to SI. This study examined the relation between aspects of inhibitory control across explicit and implicit emotional contexts and levels of brooding rumination among individuals with and without SI. Participants included 49 adults (21 ideators and 28 controls, M age=29.63, SD=10.07) recruited from the community. They completed a suicide risk interview, measures of rumination and suicidality, and a modified affective go/no-go task assessing response inhibition across emotional word stimuli in explicit and implicit contexts. Results indicated that ideators reported significantly higher brooding rumination than controls. Generalized linear mixed modeling revealed three main effects: ideators had faster RTs than controls, RTs were faster across implicit trials than explicit trials, and more commission errors and omission errors were made on explicit trials than implicit trials. No significant interactions emerged. Findings suggest that ideators exhibit heightened reactivity to stimuli, regardless of valence or level of processing. Explicit emotional processing is likely imposing a higher cognitive load, thereby disrupting inhibitory functioning. While brooding rumination was elevated across ideators, it did not directly impact aspects of response inhibition.

Download

Share

COinS