Interpretational Processing Biases in Emotional Psychopathology

Dr. Marcella L. Woud studied psychology (‘Master of Sciences’, 2008) and completed her PhD at Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands (‘cum laude’, i.e., the highest possible distinction for a Ph.D in the Netherlands, which is awarded in 5% across all disciplines). During her studies and PhD, she worked and visited a number of international labs at e.g., University of Oxford and Harvard University. In November 2013, she joined the team of Dr. Margraf at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) in Germany as a Postdoctoral Researcher. Parallel to her Postdoc, she started the clinical training to become a licensed psychotherapist (with a focus on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy), completing this training in April 2020. During her research career so far, Dr. Woud has received a number of awards and prizes. For example, during her PhD, she won the Elisabeth Frye Stipendium, which is awarded to the most talented and promising female PhD students. In 2018, the Association for Psychological Science (APS) selected her as a Rising Star. This is an award to outstanding scientists in the earliest stages of their career whose innovative work has already advanced the field and signals great potential for their continued contributions. The research of Dr. Woud is supported by a number of prestigious grants. In 2020, the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG) awarded her an Emmy Noether grant, which provides exceptionally qualified early career researchers the opportunity to lead an independent junior research group for a period of six years. Dr. Woud is also a Principal Investigator in a DFG-funded Collaborative Research Centre at RUB.Dr. Woud’s work focusses on bridging experimental investigation and clinical translation in the context of anxiety disorders, such as Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Panic Disorder, and Social Anxiety Disorder, as well as in Depression.  She has a specific interest in the role of cognitive biases, e.g., dysfunctional appraisals, associations, and interpretations, and their role as a correlate, predictor, and causal risk factors in the context of emotional psychopathology. Further, her research addresses the mechanisms underlying these biases including their psychophysiological and neuronal correlates.

• Part 1.Mehcanisms.- Chapter 1. A commentary: Why we need to understand mechanisms.- Chapter 2. Systematic steps for the scientist – practioner route to foster evidence-based treatments.- Chapter 3. Cognitive, interpretational predictors of both emotional psychopathology and therapy outcome.- Chapter 4. Interactions between interpretational and other cognitive biases.- Chapter 5. Physiological and neural correlates of interpretational biases in emotional psychopathology.- Chapter 6. Boosting functional, interpretational learning processes in psychotherapy via pharmacological agents.- Chapter 7. Mental imagery as a tool to change interpretational processing biases.- Chapter 8. The role Cognitive Bias Modification to change interpretational processing biases.- Chapter 9. The role of prediction error as a mechanism in exposure.- Part II. Clinical presentation and treatment across different emotional disorders.- Chapter 10. From theory to application: A brief history of cognitive restructuring.- Chapter 11. Depressive disorders.- Chapter 12. Phobic disorders.- Chapter 13. Generalized Anxiety Disorder.- Chapter 14. Panic disorder.- Chapter 15. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.- Chapter 16. Post-traumatic stress disorder.