KEYNOTE ABSTRACTS

Stop Rules for Worrying and Checking: A Metacognitive Factor in Perseverative
Psychopathologies

Both checking and worrying are open-ended tasks and this is no more apparent than in disorders such as OCD and GAD when these activities become perseverative and form cardinal features of the diagnostic criteria. However, research over the past 10 years has highlighted the fact that individuals engaging in checking and worrying do deploy implicit stop rules for these activities, and the kinds of stop rules they deploy will influence their perseveration at the task. This paper reviews research on stop rules for checking and worrying, describes the different types of stop rules that individuals with anxiety-based disorders may deploy, explains how these stop rules may interact with the individuals current mood to generate perseveration at the activity, discusses the factors that influence the type of stop rule deployed, and examines how stop rule use can become linked to metacognitive beliefs.