PhD Scientific Days 2026

Mental Health Sciences 2.

Explorative investigation into the self-pattern dynamics

Name of the presenter

Holka, Szilárd

Institute/workplace of the presenter

Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy

Authors

Holka Szilárd¹, Kinga Farkas¹
1: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy

Text of the abstract

In Gallagher’s self-pattern perspective the self is a constellation of interacting bodily, affective, social, cognitive and narrative processes. Disruptions in this constellation may underlie psychopathology, yet little is known about within-person fluctuations. Intensive longitudinal designs can capture this variation with high ecological validity. Mentalization, the capacity to interpret one’s own and others’ mental states, is thought to shape self-organisation but its influence on self-pattern dynamics is unclear.

This exploratory study examines how bodily processes (interoceptive attention), affective experiences, social interactions and self-certainty changes over time, and whether these dynamics differ between adults with psychiatric disorders and healthy participants. Our hypothesis is that non-clinical participants will demonstrate higher mentalization capacity and more cohesive self-pattern networks than clinical participants.

Hungarian adults are being recruited through social media platforms and clinical institutions. Before the experience sampling phase, participants complete questionnaires assessing demographic background, mentalization, attachment, self-concept clarity, embodied selfhood. Participants who agree to join the ESM phase then undergo a 14-day data collection receiving seven semi-random prompts daily between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. and responding to 18–27 items on interoceptive attention, affective experiences, social interactions and self- and other-certainty via visual analog scales. Morning and evening diaries capture sleep, rumination and end-of-day reflections. Compliance is supported through a dynamic incentive scheme. On day 15, participants fill out additional cross-sectional questionnaires about environmental exposure, mindful attention, train anxiety, depression, emotion regulation. Multilevel vector autoregressive models will estimate temporal, contemporaneous and between-subject networks, with centrality indices and assumption checks guiding interpretation.

Data collection is still ongoing; preliminary network analyses comparing groups and examining mentalization-related differences will be presented.

By mapping how diverse constructs of the self fluctuate in daily life and how mentalization capacity moderates these dynamics, this study aims to inform therapeutic perspectives on self-organisation and psychopathology.