The Influence of PTSD Symptom Severity on Emotion-Laden Word use and Cognitive Processing Styles

Overview: This study investigates how PTSD symptom severity influences emotional language use and cognitive processing styles. We focused on how individuals with varying levels of PTSD severity use emotion-laden and emotion-label words when describing traumatic events, revealing significant insights into emotional regulation and cognitive processing.

Key Findings:

• Emotion-Laden vs. Emotion-Label Words: Participants used more emotion-laden words (e.g., "funeral") than emotion-label words (e.g., "happy") when describing adverse events. Emotion-laden words carry stronger emotional impact, regardless of their positivity or negativity.

• Impact of PTSD Symptom Severity:

  • Individuals with higher PTSD severity used more positive emotion-laden words but often negated them (e.g., “can’t believe”), indicating complex emotional modulation and defensive emotional stances.

  • In contrast, individuals with lower PTSD severity tended to use emotion-laden words more directly, reflecting healthier emotional processing.

• Cognitive Processing Styles:

  • PTSD severity was linked to maladaptive processing styles like overaccommodation (overgeneralizing) and assimilation (fitting new experiences into rigid beliefs).

  • Higher PTSD severity often resulted in a more rigid cognitive style, impacting how individuals use emotional language to process traumatic events.

Therapeutic Implications: Encouraging an accommodative processing style, where beliefs are adjusted based on new information, may help mitigate the negative impacts of PTSD. This approach could lead to improved emotional expression, flexibility, and resilience.

Future Directions: We are currently expanding our research to clinical populations, such as veterans, where we observe a stronger association between positive emotion-laden word use and PTSD severity.

Significance: This study sheds light on the complex relationship between language, emotion, and cognitive processing in trauma-affected individuals. By understanding how emotional language use reflects underlying psychological mechanisms, this research aims to inform more targeted therapeutic interventions for those with PTSD.