Emotional working memory updating in individuals with borderline personality features

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Individuals with features of borderline personality disorder (BPD) are highly sensitive to social rejection. Working memory (WM) may play a critical role in processing emotional interpersonal information in BPD. Yet, little is known about how emotional WM operations are related to sensitivity to rejection cues and BPD features. Therefore, this study examined relationships among emotional WM operations, rejection sensitivity, and BPD features.

METHODS: Participants with BPD features (n = 39 with non-suicidal self-injury history; n = 47 without non-suicidal self-injury history) and healthy participants (n = 46) completed an emotional two-back task before and after a social exclusion induction (the Cyberball game).

RESULTS: Results showed that participants with BPD features were slower at discarding faces expressing anger and pain from WM compared to healthy individuals before the social exclusion induction. Participants with BPD features and a history of self-injury were also slower at entering happy faces into WM compared to the other participants. Moreover, across participants, slower WM discarding of angry and pain faces was associated with higher levels of rejection sensitivity. Finally, no group differences emerged with respect to WM entering and discarding operations for emotional faces in response to social exclusion.

LIMITATIONS: This study was conducted in a sample of undergraduate students and did not consider comorbidity with other forms of psychopathology.

CONCLUSIONS: These findings cast light on how emotional WM difficulties may be involved in how individuals with BPD process emotional interpersonal information.