Towards an emotional 'stress test': a reliable, non-subjective cognitive measure of anxious responding. Aylward, J. & Robinson, O. J. Scientific Reports, 7:40094, January, 2017.
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Response to stress or external threats is a key factor in mood and anxiety disorder aetiology. Current measures of anxious responding to threats are limited because they largely rely on retrospective self-report. Objectively quantifying individual differences in threat response would be a valuable step towards improving our understanding of anxiety disorder vulnerability. Our goal is to therefore develop a reliable, objective, within-subject 'stress-test' of anxious responding. To this end, we examined threat-potentiated performance on an inhibitory control task from baseline to 2-4 weeks (n = 50) and again after 5-9 months (n = 22). We also describe single session data for a larger sample (n = 157) to provide better population-level estimates of task performance variance. Replicating previous findings, threat of shock improved distractor accuracy and slowed target reaction time on our task. Critically, both within-subject self-report measures of anxiety (ICC = 0.66) and threat-potentiated task performance (ICC = 0.58) showed clinically useful test-retest reliability. Threat-potentiated task performance may therefore hold promise as a non-subjective measure of individual anxious responding.
@article{aylward_towards_2017,
	title = {Towards an emotional 'stress test': a reliable, non-subjective cognitive measure of anxious responding},
	volume = {7},
	issn = {2045-2322},
	shorttitle = {Towards an emotional 'stress test'},
	doi = {10.1038/srep40094},
	abstract = {Response to stress or external threats is a key factor in mood and anxiety disorder aetiology. Current measures of anxious responding to threats are limited because they largely rely on retrospective self-report. Objectively quantifying individual differences in threat response would be a valuable step towards improving our understanding of anxiety disorder vulnerability. Our goal is to therefore develop a reliable, objective, within-subject 'stress-test' of anxious responding. To this end, we examined threat-potentiated performance on an inhibitory control task from baseline to 2-4 weeks (n = 50) and again after 5-9 months (n = 22). We also describe single session data for a larger sample (n = 157) to provide better population-level estimates of task performance variance. Replicating previous findings, threat of shock improved distractor accuracy and slowed target reaction time on our task. Critically, both within-subject self-report measures of anxiety (ICC = 0.66) and threat-potentiated task performance (ICC = 0.58) showed clinically useful test-retest reliability. Threat-potentiated task performance may therefore hold promise as a non-subjective measure of individual anxious responding.},
	language = {eng},
	journal = {Scientific Reports},
	author = {Aylward, Jessica and Robinson, Oliver J.},
	month = jan,
	year = {2017},
	pmid = {28071668},
	pmcid = {PMC5223119},
	keywords = {Adolescent, Adult, Anxiety, Diagnostic Tests, Routine, Female, Healthy Volunteers, Humans, Male, Retrospective Studies, Stress, Psychological, Young Adult},
	pages = {40094},
}

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