Recognizing Anxiety Disorders in the Aftermath of the World Trade Center Crisis

This article seeks to educate the reader on how to recognize the presence of anxiety disorders as they occur in the church community. The author uses medical information, Scriptural wisdom and a case illustration to help concerned Christians to assist sufferers in getting appropriate care. Anxiety disorders in the aftermath of the World Trade Center trajedy will be on the rise and the paper addresses this matter particularly for clergy, caregivers and professional counselors.     

The face of fear: Effects of eye gaze and emotion on visual attention

We investigated whether a fearful expression enhances the effect of another's gaze in directing the attention of an observer. Participants viewed photographs of faces whose gaze was directed ahead, to the left or to the right. Target letters then appeared unpredictably to the left or right. As expected, targets in the location indicated by gaze were detected more rapidly. In nonanxious volunteers the effects of fearful gaze did not differ from neutral gaze, but fearful expression had a more powerful influence in a selected high anxious group. Attention is thus more likely to be guided by the direction of fearful than neutral gaze, but only in anxiety-prone individuals.     

Habituation in high‐risk infants: reliability and patterns of responding

We examined both the reliability of infant‐controlled habituation and patterns of responding in a group of high‐risk infants (mean age 16 mos). Good test–retest reliability was found for mean, total, and baseline looking time for one of the stimuli. Classification of infants' pattern of performance yielded two groups: linear (57%) and non‐linear (29%) responders; 14% of cases could not be classified because of cross‐session inconsistencies in performance. Linear responders had shorter total looking times, fewer trials to criterion, and showed more habituation than non‐linear responders, thus validating the linear/non‐linear distinction. Our findings indicate that the infant‐controlled habituation task can be used reliably with infants who are at high risk for developmental disorders. Indeed, we provide evidence that this task is not only reliable, but may also provide meaningful distinctions between infants within the high‐risk population. Discussion focuses on the role of attention in distinguishing between short (linear) and long (non‐linear) lookers. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Participants' reactions to “Equity with the world”

According to traditional Equity theory, the injustices that an individual encounters in one relationship should not affect his other relationships. By definition, the equitableness of one relationship (say the AB relationship) depends entirely on how much Participants A and B contribute to the relationship and how much they get out of it.Austin, in Austin and Walster (1973), however, argues that Equity theory must make transrelational predictions. He argues that persons attempt to maintain both “Person-specific Equity” and “Equity with the World” (e.g., Equity with others in general). The authors predicted (and found) that whether a person focuses on “Person-specific Equity” or “Equity with the World” depends on whether or not he feels “accountable” for his behavior. When participants knew they could not be held accountable for their actions, they routinely sacrificed Person-specific Equity in order to maintain Equity with the World. However, when they knew they would have to confront their second partner eventually, they rarely sacrificed Person-specific Equity. (Evidently, they assumed their partners would not sympathize with their desire to maintain transrelational equity.)In this experiment, we predicted (and found) that such pessimism (by persons wishing to restore “Equity with the World”) is not justified. Inequitably treated partners' dissatisfaction and hostility were markedly blunted when individuals believed that their “unfair” partner was attempting to restore “Equity with the World“.     

Balance,positivity, and agreement in the Jordan Paradigm: A defense of balance theory

It was argued that Heider's p?o?x triad can best be conceptualized according to a three- factor analysis of variance model in which the p?o, p?x, and o?x bands are all factors. From this perspective the balance effect is the triple interaction, the positivity effect a main effect for the p?o factor, and the agreement effect a p?x by o?x interaction. Although the existence of the latter two effects has previously been regarded as damaging to balance theory, it was shown that these effects could be interpreted from a balance perspective and that balance theory could be used to generate supportable propositions regarding these effects. Thus in agreement with a unit-relation interpretation it was shown, in accordance with balance theory, that positivity effects are obtained when the subject, or p, assumes future contact with o, that reverse positivity effects are obtained when the subject anticipates breaking off contact with o, and that no positivity effect is obtained when there is absolutely no contact, past or future. It was also demonstrated in an experiment involving the p?o?q triad that, in accordance with balance theory, positivity effects may be produced by the assumption or inference of same-sign reciprocation in sentiment. Evidence for two balance processes underlying agreement effects was also found. One of these processes was based on the assumption that the subject would have or reveal psycho-logical reasons for the disagreement and thus produce imbalance. Consistent with this interpretation it was found that the agreement effect was significantly larger when future contact with discussion of x was assumed than when future contact without discussion of x was assumed. The other, or unit-relation interpretation was supported by evidence indicating that the breaking off of contact resulted in a reversed agreement effect. In general, it was argued that balance theory did quite well in such phenomenological investigations when attention was not narrowly restricted to the three-sign pattern but considered other potential cognitive bands.     

Aggressive Children and Effective Communication

Testing a component of a theoretical model which postulates that low levels of communication effectiveness accompany the social and affective problems presented by aggressive children, the study compared the communication skills of a group of aggressive (n = 49) and nonaggressive (n = 49) elementary school children (selected on the basis of teacher ratings) in a structured and cooperative communication task. Based on direct observational measures of communication effectiveness and aggression, and on teacher, peer, and self-rating measures of peer rejection and depressive symptoms, results showed that (a) aggressive children exhibited less effective communication skills and more disruptive communication skills than nonaggressive peers; (b) aggressive children experienced higher levels of peer rejection and depressive symptoms than nonaggressive peers; and (c) group differences in communication effectiveness could not be accounted for by differences in observed aggression and remained significant, even after controlling for differences in peer status and affective functioning. These findings highlight the role that ineffective communication may play in the development and maintenance of aggression and have important theoretical and applied implications, which are briefly discussed. © 1994 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Trait anxiety and perceptual load as determinants of emotion processing in a fear conditioning paradigm

The impact of trait anxiety and perceptual load on selective attention was examined in a fear conditioning paradigm. A fear-conditioned angry face (CS+), an unconditioned angry face (CS-), or an unconditioned face with a neutral or happy expression were used in distractor interference and attentional probe tasks. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants classified centrally presented letters under two conditions of perceptual load. When perceptual load was high, distractors had no effect on selective attention, even with aversive conditioning. However, when perceptual load was low, strong response interference effects for CS+ face distractors were found for low trait-anxious participants. Across both experiments, this enhanced distractor interference reversed to strong facilitation effects for those reporting high trait anxiety. Thus, high trait-anxious participants were faster, rather than slower, when ignoring CS+ distractors. Using an attentional probe task in Experiment 3, it was found that fear conditioning resulted in strong attentional avoidance in a high trait-anxious group, which contrasted with enhanced vigilance in a low trait-anxious group. These results demonstrate that the impact of fear conditioning on attention is modulated by individual variation in trait anxiety when perceptual load is low. Fear conditioning elicits an avoidance of threat-relevant stimuli in high trait-anxious participants.     

Situational and dispositional coping: an examination of their relation to personality,cognitive appraisals,and psychological distress

Reliable data on the relationships between situational and dispositional coping strategies are sparse. In order to address this gap in the literature, this study examined the determinants and adaptational outcomes of both types of coping. Two hundred and thirty‐three students completed, along with measures of situational and dispositional coping, measures of personality, cognitive appraisals, and psychological distress, the latter variable being evaluated concurrently and prospectively (10 weeks). Results showed that personality shared as much variance with situational as with dispositional coping, but the patterns of relationships were rather different. In addition, cognitive appraisals were found to add significant incremental validity in predicting situational coping beyond trait coping, but primary appraisals were redundant with personality traits, in particular neuroticism. Finally, in spite of the significant amount of variance shared between the two types of coping, they both accounted for individual differences in concomitant and prospective psychological distress, and the relation between dispositional coping and distress was partially mediated by situational coping. The implications of these findings for understanding the relationships between the two types of coping strategy are discussed. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.