Apocalypse Manana: Dealing with Intrusive Thoughts and Cognitive Interference

With headlines proclaiming the meltdown of civilization as we know it, and economic apocalypse around the corner, it's no wonder that e-learners may have difficulty with focus. Intrusive thoughts can cause cognitive interference, as can the emotional response that one naturally has to the idea that the world as we know it is coming to an end. Yet, when you wake up and find the world has not come to an end, how you deal with the consequences of the fact that you spent the last few days wondering how to squirrel away canned goods and grieving over the erosion of your life's savings, your 401-K? One quick approach is to postpone apocalypse -- let it occur manana -- and in the meantime, find ways to deal with intrusive thoughts and cognitive interference in order to get your life back on track. You can learn more about the effects of intrusive thoughts and cognitive interference on stress in the family environment and job performance with an online bachelors degree in social work. In the meantime, here are a few thoughts.

The first step is to recognize that you are having intrusive thoughts. Don't criticize yourself for it. It is natural. In fact, you may be dispositionally inclined to experience intrusive thoughts. According to research on intrusive thoughts and cognitive interference in students working in laboratory situations, researchers Sarason etal concluded that some individuals posssessed personality traits that predisposed them to have intrusive thoughts, which caused cognitive interference (Sarason, 1986).

Tending to have intrusive thoughts may be a part of one's disposition, and an aspect of one's personality which is not likely to change over time. However, having intrusive thoughts can be associated with depression or anxiety. The types of intrusive thoughts will vary. Researchers have found that if one is clinically depressed, the intrusive thoughts tend to be self-critical, and they tend to express the viewpoint that one is helpless and unable to influence one's situation (Sarason, 1986, p. 1017). For a depressed individual, apocalyptic and highly negative headlines will tend to trigger thoughts of helplessness, and lead to negative beliefs, leading to a tendency to withdraw and to stop working on projects.

In contrast, for individuals experiencing generalized anxiety, the intrusive thoughts may also be initially negative. However, the key difference is that with anxious individuals, the intrusive thoughts act as triggers, and they lead to a series of intrusive thoughts, which tend to go along established pathways of associations. The pathways and networks of associations are well-developed and well-traveled, which creates an almost predictable outcome.

Studies have shown that anxious individuals tend to have a bias toward threatening information (Sarason, 1986, p. 1017). In times of economic crisis and apocalyptic headlines, the anxious individual may find it almost impossible to block out or resist the attraction of the cues that trigger the thoughts.

While some intrusive thoughts are task-related, many will not be. Researchers have found that athletes as well as students have issues with cognitive interference. For example, in a study of golfers, researchers Thill and Curry (2000) found that certain self-regulation strategies worked quite well when golfers had intrusive thoughts such as worry about competition, other golfers, the environment, etc.

Social comparison intrusive thoughts were found to be more destructive than task-involvement, and learning and achievement thoughts (Thill & Curry, 2000, p. 104). Thus, the golfers were more successful when they were able to identify when intrusive thoughts were occurring and then to consciously turn the thoughts to those of task-accomplishment and process.

Task-accomplishment thoughts can be negative and destructive when they are associated with perfectionism (Flett & Madorsky, 2002). If the intrusive thoughts follow a pattern of making negative comparisons with others, or disparaging one's efforts because they do not achieve the highest ratings, there could be a problem of perfectionism. Flett and Madorsky found that perfectionistic thinkers who had intrusive thoughts tended to ruminate on the thoughts, repeating them to the point of being incapacitated. One strategy for stopping the rumination and going on to productive thoughts could involve setting easily achieved goals, and then rewarding oneself for reaching them. Have you logged into your course today? Pat yourself on the back. Did you interact on the discussion board? Another reward. Avoid creating a reward system that depends on the evaluations of others (grades from instructors, positive feedback from students, etc.). Keep the locus of control on yourself.

It is possible that intrusive thoughts are associated with other behaviors, such as rituals, magical thinking, hoarding, excessive ordering and arranging. While one should not jump to pathologize natural responses to difficult times, it is also important to recognize that there could be an underlying issue, such as obessive-compulsive disorder. Psychiatrists Merlo and Storch (2006) have discussed the connection between intrusive thoughts, cognitive interference, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The key is to be open-minded rather than self-condemning if you recognize behavior patterns that correspond with obsessive-compulsive disorder. There is nothing wrong with seeking support.

Strategies for Controlling Intrusive Thoughts and Minimizing Cognitive Interference

1. Listen to your thoughts. Find out when and how you respond to external news or triggers. If your thoughts tend to be about people, places, social comparisons, recognize that. Try to replace the thoughts with those that relate to your task: process, procedures, short-term goals.

2. If you find yourself feeling helpless and telling yourself that you are not able to do anything to protect yourself against change, reassure yourself that your feelings and thoughts are normal. However, there are ways to protect yourself. One is to study, and keep steady with your plans to improve your life and your future. Remind yourself that statistically speaking, education is the best approach.

3. If you find your thoughts and feelings racing ahead, and you find yourself predicting negative outcomes and doomsday scenarios, recognize that you may be feeling anxious. Racing thoughts and random, negative associations that respond to feelings of being threatened are very understandable given the situation. Reassure yourself that the racing thoughts are simply racing thoughts. You do not have to act or react to them.

4. Recognize that cognitive interference tends to occur in one or more spheres of cognition. There may be a visual trigger, which will trigger thoughts and emotions. One way to respond to the visual triggers switch learning strategies and move more toward alternative modes. For example, you may focus on audio and kinaesthetic, which can help you keep track. Write notes. Listen to lectures. Watch videos.

5. Do what you can to place yourself in a situation that minimizes interference. When the cognitive interference occurs, sort out the task-related thoughts and the non-task related thoughts. Set aside the non-task-related thoughts, and tell yourself you do not have to react to them.

6. Realize that some decisions are fear-based and some are not. Evaluate your actions or the thoughts about the actions you're thinking about taking. Are your thoughts racing? Are you telling yourself you need to change your major? Make a list of pro's and con's. Sleep on the decision.

7. Recognize when decisions need to be made quickly, and when they can be postponed. If you are studying for a test, you need to continue to study, even if your emotions are surging and you're feeling a fight-flight response. Channel the fight-flight into the fight at hand: the test. Use adrenaline to sharpen your focus on the task at hand rather than to let it distract you.

8. If your intrusive thoughts share characteristics of perfectionism, make sure that you recognize this, and the destructive nature of perfectionism. Develop a strategy for rewarding yourself for achieving small goals and milestones, and commend yourself for completing tasks, and avoid comparing your performance to others, or to a quality standard. Simply pat yourself on the back for showing up and doing it.

9. If you find you are engaging in behaviors that are ritualized and to the point of being incapacitating, it might be helpful to employ some of the strategies used by those with obsessive-compulsive disorder in order to liberate yourself from the tyranny of a compulsion, and to reintroduce choice into your life.

These are unsettling times. Yet, they do not have to be self-defeating times. You can use the challenges that you are feeling to gain self-awareness and to develop strategies that will help you be a more effective e-learner and a more self-confident global citizen, able to move forward with calm and compassion. Ultimately, the ability to develop self-regulation strategies and to weather storms of surging thoughts and feelings will make you a true leader.


References

Flett, Gordon L.; Madorsky, Dara; Hewitt, Paul L.; Heisel, Marnin J. (2002). Perfectionism Cognitions, Rumination, and Psychological Distress Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy, Spring 2002, Vol. 20 Issue: Number 1 p33-47.

Ladouceur, Robert; Freeston, Mark H.; Rhéaume, Josée; Dugas, Michel J.; Gagnon, Fabien; Thibodeau, Nicole; Fournier, Sarah (2000) Strategies used with intrusive thoughts: A comparison of OCD patients with anxious and community controls. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Vol 109(2), May 2000. pp. 179-187.

Merlo, Lisa J.; Storch, Eric A. (2006) Obsessive-compulsive disorder: Tools for recognizing its many expressions. Journal of Family Practice, Mar2006, Vol. 55 Issue 3, p217-222.

Pierce, Gregory R.; Ptacek, J. T.; Taylor, Bruce; Yee, Penny L.; Henderson, Ciarda A.; Lauventi, Helene J.; Loffredo, Cynthia M. (1998) The role of dispositional and situational factors in cognitive interference. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 75(4), Oct 1998. pp. 1016-1031.

Sarason, I. G., Sarason, B. R., Keefe, D. E., Hayes, B. E., & Shearin, E. N. (1986). Cognitive interference: Situational determinants and traitlike characteristics. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 215-226.

Thill, Edgar E.; Cury, François. (2000). Learning to play golf under different goal conditions: their effects on irrelevant thoughts and on subsequent control strategies. European Journal of Social Psychology, Jan2000, Vol. 30 Issue 1, p101-122

The Best Way to Learn in an Online Course

A well-designed online course will guide you through the course content, and will also guide you in the best way to learn the material and to achieve desired learning outcomes. The course will bring together cognitive and behavioral approaches. In addition, self-regulation (motivation, goal-setting, etc) will be incorporated in a seamless way so that you're learning how to manage time, how to practice for exams, and how to plan for achieving outcomes.

There is quite a bit of support for an integrated learning approach. In 1996, H. Tait and N. J. Entwistle published the results of a study that revealed very useful connections between behavioral, cognitive, and emotional strategies. They concluded that the most effective learning strategies were ones that reinforced each other in a seamless, integrative manner. These insights are very useful for designers, instructors, and administrators who can develop and guide courses in ways that can naturally incorporate the acquisition of learning strategies.

In fact, a well-designed online or hybrid course can (and probably should) teach learning strategies as well as the course content. Needless to say, achieving learning outcomes requires one to have at least some facility with multiple learning strategies, particularly when learning styles differ. Further, external factors such as lack of access and confusion can create anxiety, frustration, or confusion and can act as barriers to persistence.

Cognitive Learning Strategies
1---Rehearsal

Rehearsal is not simply a matter of repetition. It involves organizing information so that it is easy to retrieve. In a traditional setting, students often copy notes, or recopy the content. Studies have suggested that this is not particularly effective at achieving deep learning, but it does help students in classification and identification of content.

In an online environment, "rehearsal" is an automatic, and is often built into navigation tools, and reinforced by using color, typography, and design. Learning activities can also ask students to type categories and to rehearse knowledge. This approach is most effective when it requires students to make connections or to classify and organize content.

One effective to rehearse knowledge is to take practice tests and quizzes (when available). Another is to share information in the discussion board.

2---Organization
Organizing involves placing information into a form that allows you to retrieve information. This may involve creating key topics and issues, and to build cognitive structures that allow classification, grouping, and inter-relation. It requires synthesis, evaluation, and higher-level activities which can lead to deeper learning.

In an online environment, if you are required to engage in an instructional activity that requires both rehearsal and organization, you will be more able to be flexible in your thinking and to use the information in more than one setting or context.

3---Elaboration
You may need to describe, define, or explain a topic. You are elaborating. This procedure is deeply constructivist in its epistemological underpinnings, which is to say that it requires students to not only repeat, restate, classify, organize, it requires you to make connections between seemingly unrelated chunks of information. It may also require making connections between course content and the your own knowledge or experience.

An online course can require you to write essays, or provide brief analyses that require the learner to engage in elaboration. To be most effective, a set of procedures or "guiding questions" can provide the scaffolding needed. Modeling elaboration by providing examples of "situated learning" -- learning that places the content within a certain context and asks the student to transform it -- can lead to the acquisition of effective learning strategies.

Behavioral Learning Strategies

1---Interpersonal help-seeking
In a classroom setting or traditional face-to-face environment, in-class group work or study groups outside the class provide an easy way to seek help.

In an online course you may wish to find answers to questions by using the discussion board, asking fellow students, posting to a wiki, doing research, finding an online tutor, or going to a virtual world or serious game for simulation(s).

2---Interaction / social reinforcement
Interactivity in a face-to-face setting is often most effective when a facilitator moderates discussions and models the behavior that is deemed desirable.

In the online environment, chat and discussion areas can be very effective, particularly if there are multimedia aspects -- video and audio -- that are easily accessed.

Blogs, instant message, informal webinars, collaborative projects and games can be ways of modeling positive interaction, and one can "reality check" one's ideas and/or thoughts. One of the most effective methods of achieving social reinforcement in an online environment is to ask students to post a project or paper in order to allow others to see what they are doing and to comment.

Establishing a group and putting together a way to communicate with online study buddies can be a very nice and effective approach, as well. Instant messaging can work, as well as other approaches.

3---Seeking help from written material
This strategy involves procedures for obtaining information from books, digital resources, and other items. Key strategies involve teaching how to narrow a search, how to recognize the correct information once it has been retrieved, and how to apply it in an appropriate manner.
The online environment offers many opportunities to coach students on how to retrieve and use information. This can range from the use of a virtual library, or the use of learning objects.

Learning objects may be informal as well as formal. For example, you may find a number of useful videos posted in YouTube or on Google Video, or in free services such as Neulio. You may also find quizzes and interactive games, or informal assessments in queendom.com or learnhub.

In fact, this is one of the best places for learning objects. Small, highly granular objects -- interactive maps, online dictionaries, diagrams, guides and flowcharts -- can be quite helpful. They can also link with cognitive strategies that involve making connections, organizing, and repeating.

4---Practical application
These procedures ask you to try things in the real world. Effective learning strategies can be modeled and transferred by using simulations, games, and virtual worlds.

Self-Regulation Strategies

1---Time management
Using the calendar function can be very helpful for organizing and planning your time. You may also wish to analyze the tasks and match the tasks to the chunks of time you have available.
Timed deadlines, and disabling/disabling access to Instant Messanger, chat, Skype, internet, and games may help.

2---Emotional control (anxiety and concentration)
Effective learning strategies in this area include procedures for minimizing and reducing anxiety, lack of concentration, and frustration.

Because of the nature of technology, the online environment can, at times, create anxiety and frustration, particularly when there are technical difficulties and access is interrupted. Poor design and navigation can create anxiety, while good design, navigation, support, and instructional activities can help the learner gain an enhanced sense of self-efficacy and self concept.

Keep in mind that the online environment (including the interface, the nature of navigation, the kinds of features), will always be in flux. This is even more the case in the Web 2.0 environment, which incorporates a great number of mashups and other informal integrated web applications. To know how is to feel confident. On way to keep emotionally calm is to try to create your own integrated web applications, or to build your own sites in myspace, facebook, linkedin, or other social networking areas.

3---Motivation
Part of the face-to-face instructional environment includes procedures to motivate individuals who are not interested in the material, or who do not like the instructional environment.
Good instructional design can be very effective in motivating you, or teaching yourself how to motivate yourself by adding interest, making connections and points of reference to your lives, establishing relevance, and instilling a sense of the usefulness and even urgency in mastering the topic.

A course that helps you connect with other people and to get the information you need can be very useful. Having access to social networking can be good in creating study buddies, sharing helpful tips and hints, and setting up mentoring. Facebook, Linkin.com, myspace, bebo.com, and a number of sims in virtual worlds (Second Life, there.com), encourage social networking in a productive, learning outcomes-oriented way. For example, you may find a tutor for Spanish in Second Life or through ning.

4---Comprehension monitoring
In the traditional environment, these refer to procedures that assess the degree to which learning objectives have been attained, and they help the instructor identify where gaps in learning exist.

In the online environment, the successful student has methods of testing, tracking, and checking his or her comprehension of the content and mastery of learning objectives. This often takes the form of e-mailing the instructor to obtain feedback. However, it can also be automated, and students can take online quizzes and/or engage in activities that help them assess whether or not they are on track. You may also take advantage so social networks for feedback and monitoring.

Conclusions
Planning an online course so that it helps guide you and your fellow students in the acquisition of effective learning strategies is a multi-pronged endeavor.

It requires a thorough understanding of a) your fellow students, their abilities, backgrounds, language, contexts, beliefs, core values, and reasons for taking the course; b) the technological environment, which includes access, hardware, variability of access, complexity of interface, etc.; c) the kinds of learning objectives that the course of study will generally involve; d) the instructors, their backgrounds and technical ability, their understanding of effective mentoring, and their willingness to adapt to ever-changing technological requirements.

Finally, be sure to employ Web 2.0 tools, tips, and strategies for access to people and resources. Social networking, collaborative information building, and informal learning tools (mashups, etc.) are constantly evolving and can help you.

Useful Resources
Ackerman, P. L., Sternberg, R. J., and Glaser, R. (Eds.) (1989). Learning and individual differences. New York : Freeman.

Caverly, D. C., and Orlando, V. P. (1991). Textbook Study Strategies. In R. F. Flippo and D. C. Caverly (Eds.), Teaching reading and study strategies at the college level. (pp. 86-155). Newark , DE : International Reading Association.

Driskell, J. E., Copper, C., and Moran, A. (1994). Does mental practice enhance performance? Journal of Applied Psychology, 78, 805-814.

Schmeck, R. R. (Ed.) (1988). Learning strategies and learning styles. New York : Plenum Press.
Tait, H. and Entwistle, N. J. (1996). "Identifying students at risk through ineefcitve study strategies", Higher Education 31, 97-116.

Weinstein, C. E., & Mayer, R. E. (1986). The teaching of learning strategies. In M. C. Wittock (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (3 rd ed. Pp 315-327). New York , Macmillan.