Expectancy bias in anxious samples.

Although it is well documented that anxious individuals have negative expectations about the future, it is unclear what cognitive processes give rise to this expectancy bias. Two studies are reported that use the Expectancy Task, which is designed to assess expectancy bias and illuminate its basis. This task presents individuals with valenced scenarios (Positive Valence, Negative Valence, or Conflicting Valence), and then evaluates their tendency to expect subsequent future positive relative to negative events.

The relationship between interpersonal problems, therapeutic alliance, and outcomes following group and individual cognitive behaviour therapy.

Background: Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is efficacious, but there remains individual variability in outcomes. Patient's interpersonal problems may affect treatment outcomes, either directly or through a relationship mediated by helping alliance. Interpersonal problems may affect alliance and outcomes differentially in individual and group (CBGT) treatments.

Interpersonal problems across anxiety, depression, and eating disorders: a transdiagnostic examination.

Objectives: Integrative models of psychopathology suggest that quality of interpersonal relationships is a key determinant of psychological well-being. However, there is a relative paucity of research evaluating the association between interpersonal problems and psychopathology within cognitive behavioural therapy. Partly, this may be due to lack of brief, well-validated, and easily interpretable measures of interpersonal problems that can be used within clinical settings.

Examining attentional biases underlying trait anxiety in younger and older adults.

Previous research has not adequately assessed the independent contributions of component attentional processes to anxiety-linked biases. MacLeod and Sadler developed a novel, lexical decision task using negative and neutral word stimuli, to enable the independent measurement of attentional engagement and disengagement. Their results suggest that anxiety-linked attentional biases are associated with facilitated attentional engagement with negative information.

The relationship between interpersonal problems, negative cognitions, and outcomes from cognitive behavioral group therapy for depression.

Background: Interpersonal functioning is a key determinant of psychological well-being, and interpersonal problems (IPs) are common among individuals with psychiatric disorders. However, IPs are rarely formally assessed in clinical practice or within cognitive behavior therapy research trials as predictors of treatment attrition and outcome. The main aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between IPs, depressogenic cognitions, and treatment outcome in a large clinical sample receiving cognitive behavioral group therapy (CBGT) for depression in a community clinic.