Physical exercise and anxiety as moderators of the stress-illness relationship

This study examines the interplay of unemployment stress, trait anxiety and physical exercise in the development of physical health. Longitudinal data were taken from a sample of East German migrants (N = 330) who were confronted with the potentially stressful demand of finding a job in the Western society. Unemployment stress was found to exert a main effect on illness level. Trait anxiety was a moderator of the stress-illness relationship, but exercise was not. As indicated by a three-way interaction involving exercise, anxiety, and stress, exercise was most beneficial among high-anxious subjects who were not exposed to unemployment stress. Results of this study suggest that exercise may not buffer the deleterious effects of stressful situational conditions (unemployment), but may effectively mitigate the health-damaging consequences of lacking personal resources, such as high dispositional anxiety.     

Cognitive functioning and anxiety

Summary Various possible differences in cognitive functioning between those high and low in trait anxiety are considered. Particular emphasis is paid to the hypothesis that individuals high in trait anxiety tend to approach threatening stimuli, whereas those low in trait anxiety tend to avoid such stimuli. The evidence indicates that there are such differences in the processing of threatening stimuli as a function of trait anxiety. However, these differences are found only under certain conditions, for example, when threatening and nonthreatening stimuli are presented concurrently, and when minor rather than major threat is involved.The differences between those high and low in trait anxiety encompass pre-attentive, attentional, and interpretative mechanisms. As a consequence, any adequate theory of trait anxiety must take proper account of cognitive mechanisms and functioning.     

焦虑障碍的认知偏向矫正元分析:效果量、影响因素及中介检验

焦虑障碍的认知偏向矫正效果及作用机制是当前一个研究热点且有争议的主题。采用元分析、元回归分析并且组合两步结构方程元分析技术,探索认知偏向矫正对焦虑障碍干预的临床和亚临床有效性,分析可能的影响因素并考察认知偏向改变在认知偏向矫正(Cognitive Bias Modification,CBM)和焦虑症状之间的中介作用。元分析共纳入46篇文献,CBM对焦虑症状干预具有虽小但显著的效果量(包含非标准化测量:g=0.29;标准化测量:g=0.26,p0.001;压力任务后焦虑症状g=0.34,p0.001),对认知偏向有中等效果量(g=0.48,p0.001);干预范式、出版特征、实验环境是焦虑症状CBM效果量的调节因素,焦虑障碍类型和实验环境对CBM认知偏向效果量有调节作用;认知偏向改变在CBM干预与焦虑障碍改变之间起显著的中介效应(z=3.13,SE=0.014,p0.001),为部分中介。将来研究可关注提升CBM症状测量或者认知偏向测量工具的信效度、发展新干预范式,尝试CBM同其他干预方式相结合,进一步探索CBM理论基础和干预机制,提升干预效果。     

Cognitive and somatic anxiety

Three hundred and forty adults (including sports players, recreational exercisers, mediators and sedentary controls) completed three inventories purporting to measure cognitive and somatic aspects of anxiety. These were the Cognitive-Somatic Anxiety Questionnaire (CSAQ) devised by Schwartz, Davidson & Goleman (Psychosomatic Medicine, 40, 321-328, 1978), the Worry-Emotionality Scale (WES, Morris, Davis & Hutchens, Journal of Educational Psychology, 73, 541-555, 1981) and the Lehrer-Woolfolk (1982) Anxiety Symptom Questionnaire (LWASQ). Factor analysis of the CSAQ and WES identified distinct cognitive and somatic anxiety factors in both inventories. Higher somatic than cognitive ratings were recorded on the CSAQ and WES, while the pattern was reversed on the LWASQ. The CSAQ can tentatively be recommended as a useful measure of these two anxiety components. We were unable to confirm an observation made previously in the literature that practice of meditation is associated with reduced cognitive anxiety, or that exercise is linked with lower somatic anxiety.     

Cognitive determinants of lactate-induced anxiety

The effects of lactate infusion on subjective mood change were studied in two differently instructed groups, in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, cross-over study. Ss who were told that infusions would produce anxiety reported a significant change in the expected direction after lactate but not after glucose. Ss who were told that infusions would produce a state of pleasant excitement showed no change after either infusion. The possible role of cognitive parameters in experimentally-induced anxiety is discussed.     

Cognitive inhibition and interference in dissociative identity disorder: the effects of anxiety on specific executive functions

Using an experimentally based, computer-presented task, this study assessed cognitive inhibition and interference in individuals from the dissociative identity disorder (DID; n=12), generalized anxiety disorder (GAD; n=12) and non-clinical (n=12) populations. Participants were assessed in a neutral and emotionally negative (anxiety provoking) context, manipulated by experimental instructions and word stimuli. The DID sample displayed effective cognitive inhibition in the neutral but not the anxious context. The GAD sample displayed the opposite findings. However, the interaction between group and context failed to reach significance. There was no indication of an attentional bias to non-schema specific negative words in any sample. Results are discussed in terms of the potential benefit of weakened cognitive inhibition during anxious arousal in dissociative individuals.     

Cognitive processes in social anxiety: the effects of self-focus, rumination and anticipatory processing

We examined three cognitive processes hypothesized to contribute to biases in judgments about and memory for social events: self-focused attention, post-event rumination, and anticipatory processing. Socially anxious (N = 58) and nonanxious (N = 58) subjects participated in a social interaction and then completed measures of self-focused attention and anxiety-related physiological sensations and behavior. The next day, subjects completed measures that assessed frequency of post-event processing and recall of the interaction. The results indicated that selective attention to negative self-related information led to biases in social judgments and recollections and that post-event processing contributed to the recall of negative self-related information. No evidence was found for selective retrieval of negative self-related information prior to a second social interaction. The results reconcile inconsistent previous findings related to memory bias in social anxiety.     

Trait anxiety moderation of the effects of life stress on state anxiety

Many theories of anxiety have predicted and much previous research has indicated a person × situation interaction between stressors and trait anxiety. This study examined the hypothesized role of individual differences in trait anxiety in the relationship between naturally occurring stressors and state anxiety scores. Two hundred eighty-seven college undergraduates completed the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, which provides both state and trait anxiety measures, and the Life Experiences Survey, which provides a measure of the amount of stress a person has undergone in the previous year. Trait anxiety scores were divided into quartiles and correlations between state anxiety scores and Life Experiences Survey scores and multiple regressions for trait anxiety and life stress to predict state anxiety were computed within each quartile. The results were that only in the first quartile was there a significant correlation between life stress and state anxiety, which was contrary to the predictions of state-trait anxiety theory. The validity of state-trait anxiety theory, as it relates to life stress, was questioned.     

Alcohol use among american college students in relation to need for cognition and expectations of alcohol's effects on cognition

This article describes the development of a new self-report measure for assessing expectations for alcohol's cognitive effects and presents an empirical investigation of the association between cognitive alcohol expectancies and alcohol use. The present study also examined the potential moderating effects of need for cognition on the association between cognitive expectancies and drinking. Participants consisted of 179 college undergraduates from a midsized public university in the southeastern United States. Results of hierarchical multiple regression analyses, conducted separately for males and females, indicated several main effects for both cognitive alcohol expectancies and need for cognition on alcohol use. In contrast to these main effects, there were no significant multiplicative interaction effects, suggesting that need for cognition did not moderate the direction of association between cognitive expectancies and drinking. The results of homologizer/moderator analyses, however, did indicate a number of significant interaction effects for both males and females. These significant homologizer findings indicated that thestrength of association between cognitive alcohol expectancies and drinking increased as need for cognition increased. Implications of the present findings for future research are discussed. This research was supported, in part, by a sabbatical award granted by the College of Charleston. The author thanks Michael Tavernetti for his assistance with this project and Dr. Rhonda Swickert for her helpful feedback on an earlier version of this article.     

Cognitive effects of language on human navigation

Language has been linked to spatial representation and behavior in humans, but the nature of this effect is debated. Here, we test whether simple verbal expressions improve 4-year-old children’s performance in a disoriented search task in a small rectangular room with a single red landmark wall. Disoriented children’s landmark-guided search for a hidden object was dramatically enhanced when the experimenter used certain verbal expressions to designate the landmark during the hiding event. Both a spatial expression (“I’m hiding the sticker at the red/white wall”) and a non-spatial but task-relevant expression (“The red/white wall can help you get the sticker”) enhanced children’s search, relative to uncued controls. By contrast, a verbal expression that drew attention to the landmark in a task-irrelevant manner (“Look at this pretty red/white wall”) produced no such enhancement. These findings provide further evidence that language changes spatial behavior in children and illuminate one mechanism through which language exerts its effect: by helping children understand the relevance of landmarks for encoding locations.