Legacy metal contamination is reflected in the fish gut microbiome in an urbanised estuary.

Estuaries are critical habitats subject to a range of stressors requiring effective management. Microbes are gaining recognition as effective environmental indicators, however, the response of host associated communities to stressors remains poorly understood. We examined microbial communities from seawater, sediments and the estuarine fish Pelates sexlineatus, in Australia's largest urbanised estuary, and hypothesised that anthropogenic contamination would be reflected in the microbiology of these sample types.

Attentional Bias Differences between Fear and Disgust: Implications for the Role of Disgust in Disgust-Related Anxiety Disorders.

Research demonstrates a relation between disgust and anxiety-related pathology; however, research has yet to reveal mechanisms by which disgust may contribute to anxiety. The current experiment examined attentional bias characteristics as one route by which disgust influences anxiety. Eighty undergraduate participants completed a rapid serial visual presentation attention task using fear, disgust, or neutral target stimuli.

Attributional style and anxiety sensitivity as maintenance factors of posttraumatic stress symptoms: A prospective examination of a diathesis-stress model.

Diathesis-stress models of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) assert that traumatic events function as stressors that interact with vulnerabilities to influence the development of PTSD. The present study prospectively examined negative attributional style (NAS) and anxiety sensitivity (AS) as maintenance factors for PTSD in female adult sexual assault victims. A diathesis-stress model was tested by examining interactions between the vulnerabilities and negative life events.

Phenomenological Characteristics of Attentional Biases Towards Threat: A Critical Review.

Although research has consistently revealed the presence of a general attentional bias towards threat, empirical and theoretical ambiguity exists in determining whether attentional biases are comprised of facilitated attention to threat, difficulty in disengagement from threat, or both, as well as whether attentional biases reflect automatic or strategic processes. This paper reviews empirical investigations across 4 common assessment tasks: the Stroop (masked and unmasked), dot probe, visual search, and the Posner tasks. Although the review finds inconsistencies both within and between assessment tasks, the evidence suggests that attentional biases towards threat are comprised of each of the phenomenological characteristics addressed in this paper.

Cognitive vulnerabilities to the development of PTSD: a review of four vulnerabilities and the proposal of an integrative vulnerability model.

While some individuals develop PTSD subsequent to traumatic experiences, many individuals resume prior functioning naturally. Diathesis-stress models suggest that stable individual differences present in individuals prior to trauma may serve as vulnerability factors to symptom development. The high levels of comorbidity and symptom similarity suggest that established vulnerability factors for anxiety and depression may also serve as vulnerability factors for PTSD.

Information processing in contamination fear: a covariation bias examination of fear and disgust.

The current study represents the first examination of covariation biases in contamination fear. Using an undergraduate sample we examined covariation bias for specific emotion outcomes (fear specific and disgust specific) associated with contamination stimuli in high contamination fear (HCF; n=32) and low contamination fear (LCF; n=30) individuals. Following random stimulus-outcome presentation participants provided estimations on the proportion of each presented stimulus-expression pairing.

Structural differentiation of disgust from trait anxiety in the prediction of specific anxiety disorder symptoms.

Research has begun to implicate the role of disgust in the etiology of specific phobias and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). However, it remains unclear if the association between disgust and specific anxiety disorder symptoms is an artifact of trait anxiety or a potential mechanism through which trait anxiety effects specific anxiety disorder symptoms. The present study employed structural equation modeling to differentiate disgust from trait anxiety in the prediction of four types of specific anxiety disorder symptoms in a non-clinical sample (N=352).

The Disgust Scale: item analysis, factor structure, and suggestions for refinement.

In the 4 studies presented (N = 1,939), a converging set of analyses was conducted to evaluate the item adequacy, factor structure, reliability, and validity of the Disgust Scale (DS; J. Haidt, C. McCauley, & P.

Short-term predictive effects of the looming cognitive style on anxiety disorder symptoms under restrictive methodological conditions.

The looming cognitive style (LCS), an overarching cognitive vulnerability for anxiety syndromes, pertains to a tendency to construct dynamic expectations (mental scenarios, images) of negative events as progressively increasing in danger and rapidly escalating in risk. This study tested the hypothesis that the LCS has functions as a cognitive antecedent and moderator for even short-term changes over a brief time interval in anxiety syndromes (worry, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) symptoms, social anxiety, general anxiety) under restrictive methodological conditions. These included: (a) a one-week interval during which very little changes in anxiety were observed, and (b) controlling for participants' depression and intolerance of uncertainty.

Scrupulosity and obsessive-compulsive symptoms: confirmatory factor analysis and validity of the Penn Inventory of Scrupulosity.

The current study examined scrupulosity in 352 unselected college students as measured by the 19-item Penn Inventory of Scrupulosity (PIOS). Confirmatory factor analysis yielded support for a two-factor model of the 19-item PIOS. However, item-level analyses provided preliminary support for the validity of a 15-item PIOS (PIOS-R) secondary to the removal of items 2, 6, 15, and 10.

The specificity of cognitive vulnerabilities to emotional disorders: anxiety sensitivity, looming vulnerability and explanatory style.

Mood and anxiety disorders share considerable phenomenological and diagnostic overlap. Several models have advanced the understanding of the phenomenological overlap of anxiety and depression; however, identification of disorder-specific etiological mechanisms remains elusive. Recently, research has advanced several cognitive vulnerability-stress models proposing that one's characteristic way of attending to, interpreting, and remembering negative events contributes vulnerability to psychopathology.

Interpretation biases in victims and non-victims of interpersonal trauma and their relation to symptom development.

Previous studies examining information processing in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have focused on attention and memory biases, with few studies examining interpretive biases. The majority of these studies have employed lexically based methodologies, rather than examining the processing of visual information. In the present study, victims (N=40) and non-victims (N=41) of interpersonal trauma viewed a series of short positive, neutral, and threatening filmstrips of social situations with ambiguous endings.

Disgust, anxiety and fainting symptoms associated with blood-injection-injury fears: a structural model.

The present study examines the structural relations between disgust sensitivity, anxiety symptoms, blood-injection-injury (BII) fears, and fainting symptoms associated with BII fears in 259 nonclinical participants. Results revealed that both disgust and BII fear were independent predictors of fainting symptoms. However, structural equation modeling revealed that the relation between disgust sensitivity and fainting was reduced to negative and non-significance when the path from BII fear to fainting was also introduced.

The structure of disgust: domain specificity in relation to contamination ideation and excessive washing.

The primary goal of the present study was to employ confirmatory factor analysis to compare two theoretical models regarding the factor structure of disgust (N=307). The two-factor model of Animal Reminder and Core disgust proposed by Rozin et al. (2000) demonstrated superior model fit over a one-factor model that has been implicated in prior research.

The Anxiety Sensitivity Profile revisited: factor structure and psychometric properties in two nonclinical samples.

Anxiety sensitivity (AS) refers to the fear of anxiety-related symptoms based upon the belief that the sensations have harmful consequences. Although the most popular existing measure is the Anxiety Sensitivity Index (ASI), the Anxiety Sensitivity Profile (ASP) was developed as an alternative and theoretically improved assessment of the multifaceted nature of the AS construct. Nevertheless, there has been a paucity of research on this measure.

The looming maladaptive style predicts shared variance in anxiety disorder symptoms: further support for a cognitive model of vulnerability to anxiety.

Looming vulnerability pertains to a distinct cognitive phenomenology characterized by mental representations of dynamically intensifying danger and rapidly rising risk as one projects the self into an anticipated future [J. Pers. Soc.