An examination of mindfulness skills in terms of affect tolerance among individuals with elevated levels of health anxiety

Background and Objectives: Affect tolerance factors, including anxiety sensitivity, intolerance of uncertainty, and emotional distress tolerance, have been implicated in the exacerbation of health anxiety. Therefore, identifying methods to improve affect tolerance in health anxious populations is imperative. Despite the link between mindfulness and greater affect tolerance in non-clinical populations, no work has examined the role of mindfulness skills in terms of affect tolerance among individuals with elevated health anxiety. The aim of the current study was to examine the unique contribution of mindfulness skills in terms of distress tolerance, anxiety sensitivity, and intolerance of uncertainty.

Methods: Participants were 218 undergraduates with clinically elevated levels of health anxiety (75.7% female; M_age?=?19.53, SD?=?3.16, Range?=?18–45) who completed self-report measures for course credit.

Results: Findings indicated that, after controlling for theoretically relevant covariates, greater acting with awareness, non-judgment, and non-reactivity were uniquely associated with greater distress tolerance, and greater non-reactivity was associated with lower levels of intolerance of uncertainty. Though none of the mindfulness skills emerged as specific individual predictors of anxiety sensitivity, these skills collectively accounted for unique variance in anxiety sensitivity.

Conclusions: These findings suggest that mindfulness skills may be helpful in targeting affect tolerance factors among individuals with elevated health anxiety.     

Examining incremental explanatory power in accounting for worry severity: negative metacognitive beliefs uniquely predict worry severity following a worry episode

Background and Objectives: Contemporary conceptual models posit that different core variables contribute to worry, including intolerance of uncertainty (IU), metacognitive beliefs, and experiential avoidance. To date, a concurrent investigation of the incremental explanatory power of these variables in accounting for worry severity remains unexamined. The present study sought to address that gap in the literature.

Design/Methods: Participants endorsing frequent worry (N?=?127) completed self-report measures assessing IU, metacognitive beliefs, and experiential avoidance during an online session. Participants later attended an in-person lab-based session where they completed a worry episode and in-vivo worry severity was assessed following the worry episode.

Results: IU, negative metacognitive beliefs, and experiential avoidance each shared a bivariate association with post-episode worry severity. However, in multivariate analyses, only baseline worry severity and negative metacognitive beliefs surrounding the dangerousness and uncontrollability of worry predicted post-episode worry severity.

Conclusions: The present results further underscore links between negative metacognitive beliefs and worry.     

I don’t know where to look: the impact of intolerance of uncertainty on saccades towards non-predictive emotional face distractors

Attentional bias to uncertain threat is associated with anxiety disorders. Here we examine the extent to which emotional face distractors (happy, angry and neutral) and individual differences in intolerance of uncertainty (IU), impact saccades in two versions of the “follow a cross” task. In both versions of the follow the cross task, the probability of receiving an emotional face distractor was 66.7%. To increase perceived uncertainty regarding the location of the face distractors, in one of the tasks additional non-predictive cues were presented before the onset of the face distractors and target. We did not find IU to impact saccades towards non-cued face distractors. However, we found IU, over Trait Anxiety, to impact saccades towards non-predictive cueing of face distractors. Under these conditions, IU individuals’ eyes were pulled towards angry face distractors and away from happy face distractors overall, and the speed of this deviation of the eyes was determined by the combination of the cue and emotion of the face. Overall, these results suggest a specific role of IU on attentional bias to threat during uncertainty. These findings highlight the potential of intolerance of uncertainty-based mechanisms to help understand anxiety disorder pathology and inform potential treatment targets.     

The Relationship Between Right‐wing Attitudes and Cognitive Style: A Comparison of Self‐report and Behavioural Measures of Rigidity and Intolerance of Ambiguity

Two recent meta‐analytic studies addressing the relationship between cognitive style and right‐wing attitudes yielded some discrepancies. We argue that these discrepancies can be accounted for when one considers the types of cognitive style measures included in those analyses. One of these analyses primarily relied on self‐report measures, whereas the other relied on behavioural measures of cognitive style. Based on a new meta‐analysis of 103 samples (total N = 12 714) focussing on behavioural and self‐report measures of rigidity and intolerance of ambiguity, we confirmed the hypothesis that self‐report scales yield stronger relationships with right‐wing attitudes than behavioural measures. We point out potential conceptual and validity issues with both types of cognitive style measures and call for cautiousness when interpreting the magnitude of their relationships with ideology. Copyright © 2016 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Exploring Relationships Between Negative Cognitions and Anxiety Symptoms in Youth With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Although cognitions are central to the conceptualization and treatment of anxiety in typically developing (TD) youth, there is scant research investigating automatic thoughts and their relationship with anxiety in youth with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We sought to examine the types of automatic thoughts experienced by youth with ASD and co-occurring anxiety as well as the predictive relationship of anxiety to different types of automatic thoughts in 97 children, ages 8-14 years. We also explored the relationship of automatic thoughts and intolerance of uncertainty. Consistent with prior data, there was a strong relationship between anxiety and automatic thoughts pertaining to social and physical threat. Anxiety and IU were independently associated with thoughts pertaining to personal failure which raises the hypothesis that personal failure may serve as a common pathway between anxiety, IU, and depression in ASD youth. These findings highlight the importance of assessing and treating negative cognitions in youth with ASD and anxiety.     

Consensus Interruptus

If all reasonable people of goodwill and patience will eventually reachconsensus, then anyone who fails to join inthat consensus as being unreasonable or lackingin good will or patience. The ``nice'(consensual) and ``nasty' (intolerant) faces ofcommunitarianism are thus joined. This articleattempts to deny communitarians that excuse forintolerance by undermining Keith Lehrer's proofof the inevitability of rational consensusamong all patient people of good will.     

无法忍受不确定性与担忧：对记忆偏差与解释偏差的检验

本研究旨在探索记忆偏差与解释偏差在无法忍受不确定性(IU)与个体担忧之间的中介作用。实验1采用伴随学习任务范式,计算被试对中性词语和不确定词的回忆量。结果发现,IU对记忆偏差的预测不显著,记忆偏差在IU与担忧倾向之间的中介作用不显著。实验2采用情境评估任务范式收集被试在不确定情境下的担忧评分和解释倾向。结果发现,IU可以正向预测被试在不确定情境下的担忧评分,被试对情境的解释倾向在IU与担忧评分的关系中起到中介作用。概言之,高IU个体存在一定的信息加工偏差。     

Characteristics of perceived electromagnetic hypersensitivity in the general population

Health problems evoked in the presence of electrical equipment is a concern, calling for better understanding for characteristics of electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS ) in the general population. The present study investigated demographics, lifestyle factors, frequency and duration, coping strategies, proportion meeting clinical criteria for intolerance attributed to electromagnetic fields (EMF ) and comorbidity. Using data from a large‐scale population‐based questionnaire study, we investigated persons with self‐reported (n = 91) EHS in comparison to referents (n = 3,250). Middle age, female sex and poor perceived health was found to be associated with EHS . More than 50% in the EHS group reported having EMF ‐related symptoms more often than once a week, and the mean number of years experiencing EHS was 10.5. More than half of the EHS group reported that their symptoms started after a high‐dose or long‐term EMF exposure, that they actively tried to avoid EMF sources and that they mostly could affect the EMF environment. A minority of the EHS group had sought medical attention, been diagnosed by a physician or received treatment. Exhaustion syndrome, anxiety disorder, back/joint/muscle disorder, depression, functional somatic syndrome and migraine were comorbid with EHS . The results provide ground for future study of these characteristic features being risk factors for development of EHS and or consequences of EHS .     

Time-Varying and Time-Invariant Dimensions in Intolerance of Uncertainty: Specificity in the Prediction of Obsessive-Compulsive Symptoms

Intolerance of uncertainty (IU) is the tendency to respond negatively toward uncertain situations. IU consists of a Prospective factor (desire for predictability) and an Inhibitory factor (uncertainty paralysis) and is central to theoretical approaches to obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). However, time-invariant (TI) and time-varying (TV) components of IU and their association with OCD symptoms are not yet understood. The present study examined the association between TI and TV components of IU and OCD symptoms in community adults (N = 1,280) over a 5-month period. Latent variable models were fit to the data to examine the relative impact of TI and TV components of IU on OCD symptoms. As a test of specificity, models examining the association between TI and TV components of IU and depressive symptoms were also examined. The results showed that IU consists of significant TI and TV components, although the TI component accounted for most of the variance (76–84%) and was more strongly associated with OCD and depressive symptoms than the TV component. Furthermore, the TI component of IU was strongly associated with OCD symptoms when controlling for depressive symptoms, and the TI component of IU was strongly associated with depressive symptoms when controlling for OCD symptoms. A consistent pattern was observed for both Prospective and Inhibitory IU factors, with stable TI components demonstrating stronger relations with OCD and depressive symptoms than TV components. These findings have implications for conceptualizing the TI component of IU as a risk for OCD and other emotional disorders.