Examining time-varying dynamics of co-occurring depressed mood and anxiety.

Background: Dimensional frameworks of psychopathology call for multivariate approaches to map co-occurring disorders to index what symptoms emerge when and for whom. Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) offers a method for assessing and differentiating the dynamics of co-occurring symptoms with greater temporal granularity and naturalistic context. The present study used multivariate mixed effects location-scale modeling to characterize the time-varying dynamics of depressed mood and anxiety for women diagnosed with social anxiety disorder (SAD) and major depression (MDD).

Avoidance and fear day by day in social anxiety disorder.

Objective: Theories assert that avoidance maintains maladaptive anxiety over time, yet a clear prospective test of this effect in the day-by-day lives of people with social anxiety disorder (SAD) is lacking.

Method: We used intensive longitudinal data to test prospective relationships between social fear and social avoidance in 32 participants with SAD who reported on a total of 4256 time points.

Results: Results suggested that avoidance strongly predicted future anxiety, but only in a minority of people with SAD.

Interpersonal problems in social anxiety disorder across different relational contexts.

People with social anxiety disorder (SAD) frequently report interpersonal problems across various domains; however, it is unclear whether these problems are observable by others or represent negatively biased self-report. We assessed the interpersonal problems of people with and without SAD using self-report, friend, and romantic partner report. We hypothesized that SAD diagnosis would predict self-reported problems across multiple interpersonal domains, but restricted domains of informant report.

Symptoms of social anxiety disorder and major depressive disorder: A network perspective.

Background: We used network analyses to examine symptoms that may play a role in the co-occurrence of social anxiety disorder (SAD) and major depressive disorder (MDD). Whereas latent variable models examine relations among latent constructs, network analyses have the advantage of characterizing direct relations among the symptoms themselves.

Method: We conducted network modeling on symptoms of social anxiety and depression in a clinical sample of 130 women who met criteria for SAD, MDD, both disorders, or had no lifetime history of mental illness.

Associations between depression, anxious arousal and manifestations of psychological inflexibility.

Background And Objectives: Psychological inflexibility exhibits across multiple facets of functioning, including thinking styles, personality, cognitive shifting, emotion, and physiology, with many of these manifestations showing associations with depression. As such, these facets might be part of an overarching latent construct of psychological inflexibility that explains associations with depression. We predicted that (1) five facets of inflexibility (perseverative thinking, personality rigidity, attention-shifting, negative emotional inertia, and low respiratory sinus arrhythmia reactivity) would load onto a unique latent construct of psychological inflexibility.

Does centrality in a cross-sectional network suggest intervention targets for social anxiety disorder?

Objective: Network analysis allows us to identify the most interconnected (i.e., central) symptoms, and multiple authors have suggested that these symptoms might be important treatment targets.

The behavioral economics of social anxiety disorder reveal a robust effect for interpersonal traits.

Recent evidence suggests that reduced generosity among individuals with social anxiety disorder (SAD) in behavioral economic tasks may result from constraint in changing behavior according to interpersonal contingencies. That is, people with SAD may be slower to be more generous when the situation warrants. Conversely, more global effects on generosity may be related to interpersonal vindictiveness, a dimension only somewhat related to SAD.

Evaluation to Improve a High School Summer Science Outreach Program.

The goal of the Young Scientist Program (YSP) at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis (WUSM) is to broaden science literacy and recruit talent for the scientific future. In particular, YSP seeks to expose underrepresented minority high school students from St.

Self-reported social skills impairment explains elevated autistic traits in individuals with generalized social anxiety disorder.

Screening for autism in individuals with generalized social anxiety disorder (GSAD) is complicated by symptom overlap between GSAD and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We examined the prevalence of self-reported autistic traits within a sample of participants with a diagnosis of GSAD (n=37) compared to individuals without a GSAD diagnosis (NOSAD; n=26). Of the GSAD sample participants, 70.