Objective and perceived physiological arousal in trait social anxiety and post-event processing of a prepared speaking task

This study investigated the influence of trait social anxiety on subjective and physiological responses to an anticipated stressor. Seventy normotensive female students characterized as either high or low in social anxiety engaged in a demanding speech task after an anticipation period of one week that provided opportunity to prepare for the task. Trait social anxiety substantially influenced objective and perceived physiological arousal. High socially anxious individuals displayed greater heart rate reactivity and greater increases in perceived arousal that were in excess of objective HR reactivity. Perceived, but not objective arousal, partially mediated the relationship between social anxiety and negative post-task reappraisals of perceived coping resources. Furthermore, self-evaluations were found to be an essential determinant of post-task rumination. The results provide support for central predictions of cognitive models on social phobia.     

The impact of pre-sleep arousal state and strategy to control unwanted thoughts on sleep quality

Objective: It has been questioned whether elevated pre-sleep cognitive arousal contributes to poor sleep or whether it is the use of maladaptive thought control strategies, used to manage this cognitive arousal, that are responsible. The study aimed to examine how these factors – cognitive arousal (with and without anxiety) and maladaptive thought control strategies contribute to perceived sleep quality (SQ). Design: 129 “healthy adults” (46 males, 83 females) were exposed to picture-stimuli eliciting either anxious cognitive arousal or non-anxious cognitive arousal at bedtime. The groups were then randomly split and briefed to use either a cognitive distraction or cognitive suppression thought control strategy or no instructions were given (controls). Subjective SQ was measured immediately on waking. Results: Induced anxious cognitive arousal was associated with lower SQ compared to non-anxious cognitive arousal. Analyses revealed a significant interaction between arousal and the strategies used to control unwanted thoughts on SQ. When experiencing anxious cognitive arousal, the strategy of distraction was associated with poorer sleep outcomes. Conclusion: The findings suggest that the efficacy of differing thought control strategies vary depending upon whether cognitive arousal elicits anxiety or not. With that in mind, clinical implications in terms of augmenting the treatment of insomnia are discussed.     

The heart of control: Proactive cognitive control training limits anxious cardiac arousal under stress

Research and theory suggest that anxious people employ cognitive control on a relatively late and transient basis. This tendency may impair emotion regulation that depends on early, persistent implementation of cognitive control. We examined whether anxious people could be trained to apply cognitive control proactively (i.e., in advance of goal-related action) and whether such training limited anxiety’s rise during stress. In Study 1, 96 high trait-anxious participants completed proactive or reactive training followed by the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) with measurement of subjective anxiety, heart rate, and skin conductance level (SCL). In Study 2, 59 high trait-anxious participants completed a proactive or no-instruction training for 4 days and then completed the TSST. For Study 2 but not Study 1, the proactive versus control training was associated with lower stress-related increases in subjective anxiety and heart rate, but not sympathetically mediated SCL. Exercising proactive control may leverage the parasympathetic nervous system to inhibit the escalation of anxious arousal during stress.     

The Role of Anxiety Sensitivity and Mindful Attention in Anxiety and Worry About Bodily Sensations Among Adults Living With HIV/AIDS

The current study examined cognitive factors that may be relevant to understanding anxiety and worry about bodily sensations among an HIV/AIDS population. Specifically, this investigation tested the main and interactive effects of anxiety sensitivity and mindful attention on anxious arousal, bodily vigilance, interoceptive fear, and HIV symptom distress among 164 adults with HIV/AIDS. Results indicated that anxiety sensitivity was positively related to anxious arousal, bodily vigilance, and interoceptive fear, but not HIV symptom distress. Mindful attention was negatively related to anxious arousal, interoceptive fear, and HIV symptom distress, but not bodily vigilance. These main effects for anxiety sensitivity and mindful attention were evident after controlling for disease stage, years with HIV, and demographic variables. There were no interactive effects between anxiety sensitivity and mindful attention. Results are discussed in terms of the clinical implications for identifying and treating anxiety and worry about bodily sensations among adults with HIV/AIDS. Limitations of this study include the use of cross-sectional data and self-report assessments.     

Offset control during recurrent 20% carbon dioxide-enriched air induction: relation to individual difference variables

Although control over aversive events maintains a central role in contemporary models of anxiety pathology, particularly panic disorder, there is little understanding about the emotional consequences of specific types of control processes. In the present study, offset control over 8 20% carbon dioxide-enriched air administrations was experimentally manipulated in a large nonclinical population (n = 96) varying in anxiety sensitivity (high or low) and gender. Dependent measures included self-reported anxiety, affective reports of valence, arousal, emotional control, and physiological indices of heart rate and skin conductance. High anxiety-sensitive participants who lacked offset control reported significantly greater elevations in self-reported anxiety, emotional displeasure, arousal, and dyscontrol relative to their yoked counterparts with offset control. In contrast, low anxiety-sensitive individuals responded with similar levels of cognitive and affective distress regardless of the offset control manipulation. Although the provocation procedure reliably produced bodily arousal relative to baseline, at a physiological level of analysis, no significant differences emerged across conditions. These findings are discussed in relation to offset control during recurrent interoceptive arousal, with implications for better understanding anxiety about abrupt bodily sensations.     

How to handle anxiety: The effects of reappraisal, acceptance, and suppression strategies on anxious arousal

It has been suggested that reappraisal strategies are more effective than suppression strategies for regulating emotions. Recently, proponents of the acceptance-based behavior therapy movement have further emphasized the importance of acceptance-based emotion regulation techniques. In order to directly compare these different emotion regulation strategies, 202 volunteers were asked to give an impromptu speech in front of a video camera. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups. The Reappraisal group was instructed to regulate their anxious arousal by reappraising the situation; the Suppression group was asked to suppress their anxious behaviors; and the Acceptance group was instructed to accept their anxiety. As expected, the Suppression group showed a greater increase in heart rate from baseline than the Reappraisal and Acceptance groups. Moreover, the Suppression group reported more anxiety than the Reappraisal group. However, the Acceptance and Suppression groups did not differ in their subjective anxiety response. These results suggest that both reappraising and accepting anxiety is more effective for moderating the physiological arousal than suppressing anxiety. However, reappraising is more effective for moderating the subjective feeling of anxiety than attempts to suppress or accept it.     

Socially Anxious and Peer-Victimized Preadolescents: “Doubly Primed” for Distress?

We examined independent and interactive associations linking preadolescents' socially anxious feelings and peer victimization experiences with their social behaviors (rated by parents and teachers) and psychophysiological arousal during lab simulations of salient peer stress situations in preadolescence (peer evaluation and peer rebuff). Sixty-three preadolescents and one parent per preadolescent participated. Respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), skin conductance level (SCL), and heart rate (HR) were assessed during peer stress situations. Preadolescents provided reports of social anxiety; preadolescents and parents reported on peer victimization; and parents and teachers rated prosocial and aggressive behaviors. Peer victimization moderated associations between social anxiety and both physiological arousal and social-behavior problems. As hypothesized, social anxiety was more strongly associated with lower RSA, higher HR, and higher aggressive behavior among preadolescents who experienced higher levels of peer victimization, compared to preadolescents who experienced lower levels of peer victimization.     

Habituation of cognitive and physiological arousal and social anxiety

This study examined differences in habituation between high and low socially anxious Ss. Participants gave three impromptu speeches, each separated by a brief rest interval. Skin conductance and heart rate were monitored during the speeches. Following each speech participants completed self-ratings of nervousness, heart rate, and palmar sweat activity as well as a modified Social Interaction Self Statement Test. Low anxious controls showed significant reduction of negative expectations and self-reported nervousness, heart rate, and sweat activity across the three trials. Actual heart rate of low-anxious subjects also decreased significantly across trials. In contrast, high anxious subjects did not evidence significant decreases in any of the above measures of anxiety and stress across the three trials. Skin conductance measures increased across trials for both groups, but increased more for the high anxious group than low-anxious controls. Results indicate that high anxiety participants are slow to decrease cognitive and autonomic responsiveness to stressful social situations.     

Concordance Between Measures of Anxiety and Physiological Arousal Following Treatment of Panic Disorder in Adolescence

This study examined the concordance (or synchrony/desynchrony) between adolescents' self-reports of anxiety and physiological measures of arousal (heart rate) both prior to and after treatment for panic disorder. Results indicated a decline in reported subjective units of distress (SUDS) for the treatment group only at the post-treatment measurement for two of three tasks. Within the treatment group, heart rate changes during the Behavioral Approach Test (BAT) were observed following treatment for one task only. Implications of this apparent desynchrony between self-report and physiological measures in adolescent panic disorder are discussed, with cognitive changes in participants' perception of anxiety after treatment suggested as an important factor in recovery.     

Latent structure of anxiety: taxometric exploration

Taxometrics is a statistical tool that can be used to discern categories from continua. Taxometric analyses (MAXCOV and MAXEIG) were conducted in a large nonclinical sample (N=1,215) to determine whether extreme anxiety forms a distinct psychopathological category, an anxiety taxon. Anxiety was operationalized with self-report measures of subjective anxiety, anxious cognitive style, physiological arousal, and anxiety-related impairment. Procedures consistently identified a taxon with a prevalence of approximately 11%. Examination of the taxon's convergent and discriminant validity revealed that it reflects general distress rather than physiological arousal. Taxon membership showed some evidence of incremental validity.     

Physiological and subjective measures of anxiety during flooding

Patterns of physiological arousal and subjective reports of anxiety were examined during individual sessions of imaginal flooding of five phobic subjects. A curvilinear pattern of increased, followed by decreased, arousal characterized changes in heart rate, respiration rate and subjective anxiety. Heart rate tended to reach its peak level before respiration rate and subjective anxiety. Intercorrelations between these measures were generally positive and significant. Comparisons between periods of high and low subjective arousal revealed a significantly greater correlation for low than for high arousal only for the subjective anxiety by respiration-rate correlation.     

EXPLICATION AND TEST OF A COGNITIVE MODEL OF COMMUNICATION APPREHENSION: A NEW LOOK AT AN OLD CONSTRUCT

A cognitive model of the processes underlying the arousal of a state of communication apprehension is proposed. This model draws upon current work in cognitive science to specify the nature of the relevant structures and the nature of the processes that operate over those structures. An empirical test of the model indicates strong support in that the interaction of long-term memory contents and perceived evaluative ness of the situation was a significant predictor of anxiety. Additionally, the model allowed the prediction of changes in physiological arousal (heart rate) over time that closely paralleled observed heart rate.     

A cognitive model of insomnia

Insomnia is one of the most prevalent psychological disorders, causing sufferers severe distress as well as social, interpersonal, and occupational impairment. Drawing on well-validated cognitive models of the anxiety disorders as well as on theoretical and empirical work highlighting the contribution of cognitive processes to insomnia, this paper presents a new cognitive model of the maintenance of insomnia. It is suggested that individuals who suffer from insomnia tend to be overly worried about their sleep and about the daytime consequences of not getting enough sleep. This excessive negatively toned cognitive activity triggers both autonomic arousal and emotional distress. It is proposed that this anxious state triggers selective attention towards and monitoring of internal and external sleep-related threat cues. Together, the anxious state and the attentional processes triggered by it tricks the individual into overestimating the extent of the perceived deficit in sleep and daytime performance. It is suggested that the excessive negatively toned cognitive activity will be fuelled if a sleep-related threat is detected or a deficit perceived. Counterproductive safety behaviours (including thought control, imagery control, emotional inhibition, and difficulty problem solving) and erroneous beliefs about sleep and the benefits of worry are highlighted as exacerbating factors. The unfortunate consequence of this sequence of events is that the excessive and escalating anxiety may culminate in a real deficit in sleep and daytime functioning. The literature providing preliminary support for the model is reviewed and the clinical implications and limitations discussed.     

Depression and Anxiety: Integrating the Tripartite and Cognitive Content-Specificity Assessment Models

The cognitive content-specificity hypothesis proposes that depression and anxiety can be discriminated on the basis of unique cognitive profiles. Alternatively, the Tripartite model suggests that, although depression and anxiety share a general distress factor, anhedonia is a characteristic of depression with anxious arousal a characteristic of anxiety. Past research devoted to integrating these two models has been limited in a number of ways. To remedy these limitations, this study attempted to assess the complete Tripartite model and used a multidimensional cognitive assessment tool to handle the heterogeneity of anxious cognitive content. Results on data collected from 411 clients seeking services at a university counseling center suggested that a one-to-one mapping between Tripartite dimensions and cognitive content was possible. Further, variables from each model simultaneously explained unique variance in depression and anxiety ratings.     

Test anxiety and ego-threatening stress: Over- (and under-) estimation of emotional reactivity

Abstract

This study examined discrepancies between subjective and objective measures of state anxiety as a function of test anxiety in undergraduates. Under evaluative stress conditions, state anxiety was assessed in terms of (a) self-reported cognitive and somatic anxiety, (b) behavioral reactivity (motor and facial tension, avoidance comments and avoidance of eye contact), (c) physiological arousal (heart rate and skin resistance), and (d) cognitive and motor task performance. Participants high in test anxiety showed disproportionately greater self-reported than objective state anxiety. In contrast, those low in test anxiety showed lower self-reported than objective anxiety. The high- and the low-test-anxiety groups differed only in self-reported emotional reactivity. In line with current cognitive theories of anxiety, overestimation of reactivity in high-test anxiety, as well as underestimation in low-test anxiety, are conceptualized as a hypervigilance bias and an avoidance bias, respectively, in processing internal cues, i.e., prioritization and inhibition of attention to one's own behavioral and physiological signs of distress.     

Negative self-focused cognitions mediate the effect of trait social anxiety on state anxiety

The cognitive model of social anxiety predicts that negative self-focused cognitions increase anxiety when anticipating social threat. To test this prediction, 36 individuals were asked to anticipate and perform a public-speaking task. During anticipation, negative self-focused cognitions or relaxation were experimentally induced while self-reported anxiety, autonomic arousal (heart rate, heart rate variability, skin conductance level), and acoustic eye-blink startle response were assessed. As predicted, negative self-focused cognitions mediated the effects of trait social anxiety on self-reported anxiety and heart rate variability during negative anticipation. Furthermore, trait social anxiety predicted increased startle amplitudes. These findings support a central assumption of the cognitive model of social anxiety.     

自动化情绪调节策略对特质焦虑大学生应激反应的影响

研究采用句子整理任务诱发自动化情绪调节策略,特里尔社会应激测试模拟应激过程,以探讨认知重评和表达抑制对不同特质焦虑倾向大学生在应激状态下的影响。结果发现,自动化认知重评和表达抑制能获得适应性生理反应。自动化情绪调节策略适用于不同特质焦虑倾向的个体。特质焦虑对个体应激反应的影响主要体现在情绪体验上,高焦虑特质个体更易体验到焦虑情绪。但个体在压力性任务中的生理反应和行为表现不受特质焦虑因素的影响。     

The time of the crime: cognitively induced tonic arousal suppression when lying in a free recall context

Previous research has shown that suspects in real-life interviews do not display stereotypical signs of nervous behaviours, even though they may be experiencing high detection anxiety. We hypothesised that these suspects may have experienced cognitive load when lying and that this cognitive load reduced their tonic arousal, which suppressed signs of nervousness. We conducted two experiments to test this hypothesis. Tonic electrodermal arousal and blink rate were examined during task-induced (Experiment 1) and deception-induced cognitive load (Experiment 2). Both increased cognitive difficulty and deception resulted in decreased tonic arousal and blinking. This demonstrated for the first time that when lying results in heightened levels of cognitive load, signs of nervousness are decreased. We discuss implications for detecting deception and more wide-ranging phenomena related to emotional behaviour.     

Pavlovian extinction,phobias, and the limits of the cognitive paradigm

The slow or total lack of decrease in some autonomic responses during extinction in aversive conditioning and concomitant verbalizations of fear have remained a problem for learning theories and psychophysiology. Removal of the aversive stimulus should result in a rapid decrement in responding, as it does in cognitive and somatic systems. In laboratory analogues of phobia and clinical neurosis, however, such decreases do not occur in some autonomic responses and reported fear. In this article three areas of research are presented in which dissociations occur between cognitive and autonomie responses: 1) relational learning, 2) phobia, and 3) incubation. The data indicate that there are some important distinctions to be made concerning the properties of different psychological and physiological systems. These distinctions pertain to the differences between cognitive and noncognitive systems, between the two branches of the ANS, and between acquisition and extinction processes. These distinctions lead to a number of hypotheses concerning dissociations between response systems and have important implications for the understanding and treatment of neurosis.     

状态焦虑对时距知觉的影响：认知评价和注意偏向有调节的中介作用

探讨状态焦虑对时距知觉的影响以及注意偏向与认知评价在其中的中介和调节作用。招募大学生60人, 随机分为高、低状态焦虑组, 用情绪诱导程序诱导高、低状态焦虑; 用点探测范式测量注意偏向; 用时间再现任务测量时距知觉; 用视觉模拟心境量表测量认知评价。结果发现：(1)状态焦虑会导致对2000 ms时距的高估; (2)注意偏向在状态焦虑对2000 ms时距知觉的影响中具有部分中介作用; (3)状态焦虑通过注意偏向影响时距知觉的中介过程受到认知评价的调节作用：只有当认知评价得分较高时, 即个体认为焦虑对心理健康有害程度较高时, 状态焦虑通过注意偏向影响2000 ms时距知觉。研究结果揭示了焦虑个体时距知觉的内部过程, 丰富了焦虑通过注意偏向影响时距知觉的解释视角, 为通过认知评价和注意偏向的调整改善焦虑个体时距偏差现象提供了重要参考。