Cognitive components of emotional disorders in patients with hematological malignancies

The aim of this work was to investigate the correlation of the level of emotional disturbances and severity of rumination among patients with hematological malignancies, as well as to study the features of cognitive bias in this group under the impact of emotionally significant stimuli compared with healthy subjects. To accomplish these goals, our research group has developed emotionally significant stimuli for the "Signal" procedure (text fragments) and modified Stroop task («traumatic» specific words) that indicate the symptoms arising from the cancer and the treatment of it. The results showed a high level of rumination corresponds to more severe symptoms of anxiety and depression. It was found that cancer patients in comparison to the subjects of the control sample appeared to increase the search time of neutral target stimuli (grammatical errors), as well as average time of sensorimotor responses to sound viewing "stressful" text fragments compared to neutral during the "Signal" procedure. Concepts associated with symptoms caused by the disease and treatment, which have been used as emotionally significant material to the Stroop task did not exactly lead to a stressful reaction. In the same time text fragments (emotionally significant stimuli to the «Signal» procedure) which reflect the semantics of distress of oncohematological patients did.