Stuck in thought: Temporal interplay between cognitive building blocks of rumination

Theoretical models of repetitive negative thinking suggest that multiple factors contribute to rumination, placing one at risk for depression. However, temporal dynamics of rumination and related cognitive risk factors remain poorly understood. Here, we aimed to model the time-varying associations between depressed mood, metacognitive beliefs, promotion focus, perfectionism, attentional control, and rumination in daily life using an ecological momentary assessment approach (EMA). Participants who had reported experiencing depression (n = 95) completed an intensive EMA procedure (6 times a day for 21 days). We relied on data-driven multi-level vector autoregressive modelling (mlVAR) to obtain temporal, contemporaneous, and between-subjects networks. The temporal network showed that fluctuations in rumination were directly predicted by prior ruminative state, attentional control, positive beliefs about rumination, cognitive self-consciousness, promotion focus, and depressed mood. The contemporaneous and between-subjects networks demonstrated a co-activation of multiple nodes. Each of these analyses provided novel insights into the main cognitive factors and their temporal interplay in relation to rumination. Overall, the results converge with integrative theoretical models suggesting bidirectional temporal associations and highlight potential direct and indirect targets for interventions to modify rumination.