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Background and objectives: Among the main dysfunctions of borderline personality disorder, a topic of interest is the study of attentional mechanisms that evaluates which stimuli attracts patients' attention and how patients process incoming stimuli. Different attentional biases could be manifested in borderline personality disorder: hypervigilance of emotional cues, difficulties in disengaging attention or avoidance. Additionally, social contents could be particularly problematic for patients given their alterations in the interpersonal domain. The current study aimed to investigate alterations in attentional mechanisms in response to interpersonal stimuli (positive, negative, and erotic) in this clinical population. Methods: A modified version of the dot-probe task using socio-relational pictures was administered to 31 patients with borderline personality disorder and 31 healthy controls. The relational stimuli had a positive, negative, and erotic valence to test possible difference related to specific contents administered. Reaction times and eye-tracking data were collected during the tasks. Results: Borderline personality disorder patients showed low latency to negative and erotic contents supporting a condition of hypervigilance associated to these contents. Additionally, patients reported high bias score in response to erotic stimuli manifesting difficulties in disentangling attention from these contents. On the contrary, reduced bias score and low visual exploration were manifested by borderline personality disorder subjects in response to negative stimuli, supporting the use of avoidance mechanisms. Additionally, high levels of negative affectivity affected the previous processes increasing patients' alertness to potential threating (or rejecting) situations. Conclusions: As a whole our findings confirm the presence of altered attentional mechanisms in borderline personality disorder. These patients showed hypervigilance to erotic and negative relational situations, in line with well documented interpersonal problems. However, stimuli specific contents (e.g., erotic vs negative) differentiate later stage of attentional process bringing patients to manifest difficulties in disengaging attention in some cases and avoidance mechanisms in others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The contradictory nature of behavioral addictions has sustained a nondefinitive debate regarding their construct validity. Objective(s): The current study aims at exploring mechanisms underlying two distinct classes of behaviors—behavioral addictions characterized by core alterations in reward processing systems (ARPS) and behaviors with a main function of maladaptive coping. Methods: This case-control study included 99 treatment-seeking individuals with a primary diagnosis of alcohol use disorder (male: N = 68; female: N = 31) and 74 healthy control (HC) subjects (male: N = 38; female: N = 36). The severity of maladaptive behaviors was measured through the Shorter PROMIS Questionnaire (SPQ). Latent mechanisms were assessed by the Disinhibition Domain of the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5-DI) and the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-II (AAQ-II). Results: The clinical group showed higher severity of behavioral addictions than HC. This difference was not replicated for the other class of maladaptive behaviors, except for compulsive buying. Ordinal regression analysis showed that the clinical group significantly predicted SPQ scores reflecting ARPS, SPQ shopping and starving subscales. This was not replicated for the overall SPQ score capturing maladaptive coping and binge eating behaviors. Controlling for PID-5-DI and AAQ-II scores, which were significantly associated to SPQ subscales, effects of the aforementioned clinical group were not significant. Conclusions: The study highlighted distinct and common mechanisms underlying different classes of maladaptive behaviors. Results supported future neuroscience research for clarifying the role of ARPS in compulsive sex and buying in order to consider them as addictive disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The current quantitative review aims at comprehensively clarifying the role of rumination in borderline personality disorder (BPD) considering its relevance for several clinical models of the disorder. Method: This meta‐analysis included 29 independent studies assessing different forms of rumination—general tendency to engage in ruminative thinking patterns and four types of emotion‐based rumination among both nonclinical subjects reporting BPD features and patients with BPD. Furthermore, the study tested whether rumination could be considered a widespread emotion‐based cognitive vulnerability in BPD. Results: Meta‐analytic procedures were based on 46 r coefficients that showed large pooled effect sizes for all forms of rumination. With the exception of interpersonal rumination, the remaining forms of rumination were equally involved in BPD features. Conclusions: Rumination should be considered a widespread emotion‐based cognitive vulnerability in BPD. Future studies should provide longitudinal and contextual‐based evaluations of rumination among treatment‐seeking individuals with BPD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]