Intolerance of uncertainty as a predictor of anxiety severity and trajectory during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background: Efforts to identify risk and resilience factors for anxiety severity and course during the COVID-19 pandemic have focused primarily on demographic rather than psychological variables. Intolerance of uncertainty (IU), a transdiagnostic risk factor for anxiety, may be a particularly relevant vulnerability factor.

Method: N = 641 adults with pre-pandemic anxiety data reported their anxiety, IU, and other pandemic and mental health-related variables at least once and up to four times during the COVID-19 pandemic, with assessments beginning in May 2020 through March 2021.

Correction: Mood symptoms predict COVID-19 pandemic distress but not vice versa: An 18-month longitudinal study.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.

Mood symptoms predict COVID-19 pandemic distress but not vice versa: An 18-month longitudinal study.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had medical, economic and behavioral implications on a global scale, with research emerging to indicate that it negatively impacted the population's mental health as well. The current study utilizes longitudinal data to assess whether the pandemic led to an increase in depression and anxiety across participants or whether a diathesis-stress model would be more appropriate. An international group of 218 participants completed measures of depression, anxiety, rumination and distress intolerance at two baselines six months apart as well as during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic exactly 12 months later.

Reinforcement sensitivity predicts affective psychopathology via emotion regulation: Cross-sectional, longitudinal and quasi-experimental evidence.

The current article presents a model wherein reinforcement sensitivity predicts depression and anxiety via trait preferences for concomitant emotion regulation strategies. In Study 1 (N = 593), BAS sensitivity positively predicted reappraisal and BIS sensitivity negatively predicted it. Reappraisal then negatively predicted depression.

Increasing the Flexibility of Implicit Personality Assessment: An Examination of a Universal Assessment Procedure of the Self.

The current studies systematically examined a new version of the Questionnaire-Based Implicit Association Test (qIAT), which minimizes the differences between direct and indirect modes of assessment. Studies 1a ( = 276) and 1 b ( = 238) tested a method that enables an indirect assessment of questionnaires that include only non-reversed items. Studies 2a ( = 255) and 2 b ( = 284) tested a task that substitutes the problematic construct-related category labels with generic, universal categories.

Testing a new indirect measure of general self-worth: The Self-esteem Questionnaire-based Implicit Association Test.

The self-esteem Questionnaire-based Implicit Association Test (SE-qIAT) provides an indirect assessment of general self-worth that is based on the items of the well-validated Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES), and the structure of this variant of the IAT enables a clearer interpretation, compared with the conventional self-esteem IAT. Study 1 (N = 224) provided support for the internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and implicit-explicit convergent validity of the SE-qIAT. In Study 2 (N = 305), the correlation of the SE-qIAT with the explicit RSES was replicated, and it was larger than the correlations of the SE-qIAT with other self-reports.

The dual-system theory of bipolar spectrum disorders: A meta-analysis.

Bipolar spectrum disorders are characterized by alternating intervals of extreme positive and negative affect. We performed a meta-analysis to test the hypothesis that such disorders would be related to dysregulated reinforcement sensitivity. First, we reviewed 23 studies that reported the correlation between self-report measures of (hypo)manic personality and measures of reinforcement sensitivity.

Expanding the Scope of Implicit Personality Assessment: An Examination of the Questionnaire-Based Implicit Association Test (qIAT).

Self-report questionnaires can only yield information that people are able and willing to report, but implicit assessment methods are not commonly used in mainstream personality research. The Questionnaire-based Implicit Association Test (qIAT) was designed to address the limitations associated with the conventional self-concept IAT, and it enables an indirect assessment that is based on the items of standard self-reports. The present studies examined the psychometric properties of the qIAT across two personality constructs.

Reinforcement sensitivity, depression and anxiety: A meta-analysis and meta-analytic structural equation model.

Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory (RST) posits that individual differences in reward and punishment processing predict differences in cognition, behavior, and psychopathology. We performed a quantitative review of the relationships between reinforcement sensitivity, depression and anxiety, in two separate sets of analyses. First, we reviewed 204 studies that reported either correlations between reinforcement sensitivity and self-reported symptom severity or differences in reinforcement sensitivity between diagnosed and healthy participants, yielding 483 effect sizes.

Predictors and Moderators of Cognitive and Behavioral Therapy Outcomes for OCD: A Patient-Level Mega-Analysis of Eight Sites.

Cognitive (CT) and behavioral treatments (BT) for OCD are efficacious separately and in combination. Tailoring treatment to patient-level predictors and moderators of outcome has the potential to improve outcomes. The present study combined data from eight treatment clinics to examine the benefits of BT (n = 125), CT (n = 108), and CBT (n = 126), and study predictors across all treatments and moderators of outcome by treatment type.

Gain through pain: Augmenting in vivo exposure with enhanced attention to internal experience leads to increased resilience to distress.

Recent variants of exposure therapy ask clients to directly engage with the distress associated with avoided experiences in order to become more resilient to future anxiety-provoking situations. In this study, we consider how this engagement impacts behavioral willingness. Forty-eight participants with high fear of cockroaches completed in vivo exposures while either mindfully attending externally to the feared object (Ext), or to both the object and their internal distress (Int/Ext).

Measuring regulation in the here and now: The development and validation of the State Emotion Regulation Inventory (SERI).

The relationship between context and emotion regulation is currently at the center of a burgeoning area of research. Commonly used emotion regulation questionnaires, however, are predominantly trait-based, and insensitive to situational choice of regulatory strategy. The current work describes the development and validation of the State Emotion Regulation Inventory (SERI), a brief measure of situational use of distraction, reappraisal, brooding and acceptance.

Now you have my attention: Empathic accuracy pathways in couples and the role of conflict.

Recent research on empathy finds evidence for 2 different pathways that enable individuals to accurately infer other persons' inner mental states: an automatic, indirect pathway that operates by having a mental state similar to the target's and (correctly) assuming that this state is similar to the target's, and a more controlled direct pathway that involves assessing the target's mental state with no regard for one's own. We present 3 daily diary studies (N = 53, 38 and 80 couples) examining the contribution of these pathways to empathic accuracy in daily assessments of romantic partners' negative moods, and examine the effects of gender and relational conflict on these pathways. Our studies revealed that both pathways consistently contributed to accuracy.

Pushed by Symptoms, Pulled by Values: Promotion Goals Increase Motivation in Therapeutic Tasks.

While many therapies focus on the reduction of disturbing symptoms, others pursue behavior consistent with personally held values. Based on regulatory focus theory (Higgins, 1997), reducing symptoms is a type of prevention goal while pursuing values is a promotion goal. In the current study, 123 undergraduate students elicited a negative, self-focused emotion-laden cognition.

Examination of the core cognitive components of cognitive behavioral therapy and acceptance and commitment therapy: an analogue investigation.

We aimed to examine the core elements of cognitive behavioral therapy and acceptance and commitment therapy that target distressing negative cognitions, cognitive restructuring (CR) and cognitive defusion (CD), respectively. Participants (N=142) recalled a saddening autobiographical event, identified a distressing thought it triggered, and completed a task that induced rumination on these cognitions. They then completed one of four brief interventions that targeted these emotionally charged cognitions: analogue versions of CR and CD, and two control interventions.

Attentional biases in PTSD: More evidence for interference.

Attentional biases to trauma-related stimuli have been widely demonstrated in individuals with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, the majority of these studies used methods not suited to differentiating difficulty disengaging attention from threatening stimuli (interference) from facilitated detection of threat. In the current study, a visual search task (VST) with a lexical decision component was used to differentiate between attentional interference and facilitation.

Acceptance and commitment therapy and the new generation of cognitive behavioral treatments.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is one of several recently-developed acceptance-based cognitive behavioral treatments which broaden the scope of CBT. The theory underlying ACT suggests that verbal representations generated by the human mind inevitably increase the psychological presence of pain and often lead to psychological inflexibility or the dominance of language products over other sources of information. Furthermore, the adequacy of problem-solving strategies that are used to achieve desired goals and decrease suffering is substantially decreased when applied to private experience.

Medication adherence in psychopharmacologically treated adults with ADHD.

Objective: One of the potential causes of residual symptoms of ADHD in adults can be difficulties with consistent adherence to medications.

Method: This formative study examined self-reported medication adherence in adults with ADHD with clinically significant symptoms despite medication treatment.

Results: Mean adherence for the two-week period prior to the assessment point was 86%, with 18% of the sample reporting less than 80% adherence, and 43% less than 90% adherence.

The role of attentional biases in PTSD: is it interference or facilitation?

Although attentional biases have been demonstrated in individuals with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the cognitive methodologies used have not allowed for disambiguation of two types of attentional biases. It remains unclear if PTSD involves difficulty disengaging attention from threatening stimuli (interference) or facilitated detection. To differentiate between attentional interference and facilitation, 57 male Vietnam-era veterans (30 High PTSD and 27 Low PTSD) completed a visual search task with a lexical decision component.

Inositol augmentation of lithium or valproate for bipolar depression.

Objective: Despite promising new therapies, bipolar depression remains difficult to treat. Up to half of patients do not respond adequately to currently approved treatments. This study evaluated the efficacy of adjunctive inositol for bipolar depression.

A pilot study of functional Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (fCBT) for schizophrenia.

Background: The feasibility and preliminary efficacy of a novel cognitive behavioral treatment for decreasing psychotic symptoms and improving social functioning was evaluated in a pilot study. This represents the first treatment outcome study of CBT for psychosis with a manualized, active comparison condition.

Methods: Thirty outpatients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder, depressed type with residual psychotic symptoms were randomly assigned to either 16 weekly sessions of functional cognitive behavioral therapy (fCBT) or psychoeducation (PE) with assessments conducted at baseline and post-treatment by blind evaluators.

Who sees trees before forest? The obsessive-compulsive style of visual attention.

It has been suggested that individuals with obsessive-compulsive personalities tend to focus on small local details in their surroundings, whereas histrionic individuals are characterized by more global information processing. Using the global-local hierarchical-letters paradigm, we were able to provide support for the first but not the second hypothesis. Measures related to obsessive-compulsive personality disorder were associated with excessive visual attention to small details of the hierarchical letters.

A six-month, placebo-controlled trial of D-cycloserine co-administered with conventional antipsychotics in schizophrenia patients.

Rationale: D-Cycloserine, a partial agonist at the glycine site of the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor, has demonstrated inconsistent efficacy for negative and cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia. The strongest evidence for efficacy has come from studies using D-cycloserine at a dose of 50 mg/day added to conventional antipsychotics in trials of 8 weeks duration or less.

Objective: To assess the efficacy for negative symptoms and cognitive impairment of D-cycloserine augmentation of conventional antipsychotics in a 6-month trial.