VTechWorks Repository :: Browsing by Author "Richey, John A."

Browsing by Author "Richey, John A."

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5-year follow-up of adolescents with social anxiety disorder: Current functioning during COVID-19
Carlton, Corinne N.; Garcia, Katelyn M.; Honaker, Makayla; Richey, John A.; Ollendick, Thomas H. (Elsevier, 2023-04)
The present study followed-up adolescents with social anxiety disorder (SAD) during the COVID-19 pandemic, approximately 5-years following their participation in an Attention Bias Modification Training (ABMT) program (Ollendick et al., 2019). The current study aimed to evaluate current functioning and quality of life (QoL) during the emerging adulthood period. Participants included 27 young adults who completed a randomized controlled trial of ABMT and were available for follow-up. Participants filled out self-report measures of QoL and functioning and underwent a clinical interview to assess current severity of social anxiety. Clinician-rated symptoms of SAD significantly decreased from post-treatment to 5-year follow-up. Additionally, results demonstrated that social anxiety severity was significantly related to poorer self-reported physical and psychological health as well as poorer functioning with regard to social distancing fears during COVID-19. Lastly, when evaluating change in symptoms over time, increases in social anxiety severity over a 5-year period significantly predicted worsened social distancing fears during COVID-19.
Alcohol use as a risk factor for bidirectional intimate partner violence among college students: Results from a daily diary study
Shaw, Thomas J. (Virginia Tech, 2024-05-02)
Background. Decades of research have found alcohol and negative affect (NA) are global and proximal risk factors for psychological and physical intimate partner violence (IPV), especially among college students. Despite recognition as the most common form of IPV, bidirectional psychological and physical IPV (i.e., instances where both partners are perpetrating and experiencing victimization) remains an understudied topic. Clarifying alcohol and NA’s influences on bidirectional IPV may inform the development of intervention programs. We hypothesized that the association between alcohol use (number of daily drinks and Heavy Episodic Drinking [HED]) and IPV would vary as a function of NA. Methods. Dating college students (N = 232; 67.7% women; 83.89% white) who drink alcohol completed daily surveys for 60 consecutive days assessing daily alcohol use, NA, and IPV perpetration and victimization. Generalized linear mixed models (GLMMs) tested the within- and between-person associations and interactions between alcohol use, NA, and psychological and physical unidirectional and bidirectional IPV. Results. A significant interaction between NA and the number of drinks before unidirectional psychological IPV perpetration emerged, such that the alcohol-IPV association was weaker at lower levels of NA. A main effect of NA emerged as a proximal antecedent of unidirectional psychological victimization and bidirectional psychological IPV. Main effects of within- and between-person alcohol use were insignificant across other models. Conclusion. On days of low NA, college students were less likely to perpetrate psychological IPV after drinking. Future research should clarify whether positive affect weakens the alcohol-IPV association and assess additional moderators of this link.
Alexithymia as a Transdiagnostic Precursor to Empathy Abnormalities: The Functional Role of the Insula
Valdespino, Andrew; Antezana, Ligia; Ghane, Merage; Richey, John A. (Frontiers, 2017-12-21)
Distorted empathic processing has been observed across multiple psychiatric disorders. Simulation theory provides a theoretical framework that proposes a mechanism through which empathy difficulties may arise. Specifically, introspection-centric simulation theory (IST) predicts that an inability to accurately interpret and describe internal affective states may lead to empathy difficulties. The purpose of this review is to synthesize and summarize an empirical literature suggesting that simulation theory provides insights into a cognitive and neurobiological mechanism (i.e., alexithymia and insula pathology) that negatively impacts empathic processing, in addition to how disruptions in these processes manifest across psychiatric disorders. Specifically, we review an emerging non-clinical literature suggesting that consistent with IST, alexithymia and associated insula pathology leads to empathy deficits. Subsequently, we highlight clinical research suggesting that a large number of disorders characterized by empathy pathology also feature alexithymia. Collectively, these findings motivate the importance for future work to establish the role of alexithymia in contributing to empathy deficits across clinical symptoms and disorders. The current review suggests that simulation theory provides a tractable conceptual platform for identifying a potential common cognitive and neural marker that is associated with empathy deficits across a wide array of diagnostic classes.
Assessing and remediating altered reinforcement learning in depression
Brown, Vanessa (Virginia Tech, 2018-07-06)
Major depressive disorder is a common, impairing disease, but current treatments are only moderately effective. Understanding how processes such as reward and punishment learning are disrupted in depression and how these disruptions are remediated through treatment is vital to improving outcomes for people with this disorder. In the present set of studies, computational reinforcement learning models and neuroimaging were used to understand how symptom clusters of depression (anhedonia and negative affect) were related to neural and behavioral measures of learning (Study 1, in Paper 1), how these alterations changed with improvement in symptoms after cognitive behavioral therapy (Study 2, in Paper 1), and how learning parameters could be directly altered in a learning retraining paradigm (Study 3, in Paper 2). Results showed that anhedonia and negative affect were uniquely related to changes in learning and that improvement in these symptoms correlated with changes in learning parameters; these parameters could also be changed through targeted queries based on reinforcement learning theory. These findings add important information to how learning is disrupted in depression and how current and novel treatments can remediate learning and improve symptoms.
Associations between Fear of Negative Evaluation and Covert and Overt Attention Bias Through Eye-Tracking and Visual Dot Probe
Capriola, Nicole N. (Virginia Tech, 2018-03-26)
Social Anxiety Disorder is characterized by irrational and persistent fears of potential evaluation and scrutiny by others. For socially anxious youth, the core, maladaptive cognition is fear of negative evaluation (FNE). Whereas Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) targets remediation of intense and unfounded FNE, Attention Bias Modification Treatment (ABMT) targets attention bias. The degree to which FNE and biased attention are related processes is unknown. This study sought to assess the relationship between FNE and two indices of attention bias (dot probe and eye-tracking). In addition, this study examines differences in attention bias between a clinically confirmed group of youth SAD and healthy controls. A significant group difference in average latency to fixate on angry faces was found [F(1,65) = 31.94, p < .001, ηp2 = .33]. However, the pattern was not consistent across the other attention bias metrics (i.e., dot probe bias scores and first fixation direction percentage towards angry faces). In addition, associations between FNE and the attention bias metrics were not statistically significant in either group. Future directions and implications of these findings within the context of refinements to existing interventions are discussed.
Associations between resting-state neural connectivity and positive affect in social anxiety disorder
Carlton, Corinne N.; Antezana, Ligia; Richey, John A. (Wiley, 2023-04)
Introduction: Social anxiety disorder (SAD) has been characterized by deficits in social motivation and lack of reactivity to pleasurable stimuli (i.e., positive affect; [PA]). Recent neuroimaging work has shifted toward examining positively valenced motivational systems in SAD focused on reward responses. However, little is known about the associations of reward connectivity and PA in individuals with SAD. As such, the purpose of the current study was to determine whether connectivity among key units of reward neurocircuitry meaningfully relate to PA and whether these key units are more heterogeneous in SAD as compared to controls.Methods: Thirty-one participants who met diagnostic criteria for SAD and 33 control participants were included (M-age = 24.8, SD = 6.9; 55% cisgender man). Seed-based timeseries correlations were conducted in NiTime to extract region of interest (ROI) coupling correlation strength values. ANOVAs were carried out to assess whether individuals with SAD differed in ROI-to-ROI connectivity strength as compared to controls. Correlations and variance analyses were also conducted to examine the relationship between ROI-to-ROI connectivity strength and PA, as well as heterogeneity in connectivity strength and PA expression.Results: Weaker connectivity between the left and right orbital frontal cortex was observed when comparing the SAD to the control group. Within the SAD group, PA was associated with several reward-related ROI couplings; however, these links were not observed among controls. Results further demonstrated that individuals with SAD had significantly more variability in reward connectivity strength as compared to controls.Conclusion: Overall, these results provide emergent evidence for the association between reward regions and PA in individuals with SAD. Additionally, these findings show that individuals with SAD demonstrate greater heterogeneity in reward connectivity.
Attention Modification to Attenuate Facial Emotion Recognition Deficits in Children with ASD
Wieckowski, Andrea Trubanova (Virginia Tech, 2019-02-04)
Prior studies have identified diminished attending to faces, and in particular the eye region, in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), which may contribute to the impairments they experience with emotion recognition and expression. The current study evaluated the acceptability, feasibility, and preliminary effectiveness of an attention modification intervention designed to attenuate deficits in facial emotion recognition and expression in children with ASD. During the 10-session experimental treatment, children watched videos of people expressing different emotions with the facial features highlighted to guide children's attention. Eight children with ASD completed the treatment, of nine who began. On average, the children and their parents rated the treatment to be acceptable and helpful. Although treatment efficacy, in terms of improved facial emotion recognition (FER), was not apparent on task-based measures, children and their parents reported slight improvements and most parents indicated decreased socioemotional problems following treatment. Results of this preliminary trial suggest that further clinical research on visual attention retraining for ASD, within an experimental therapeutic program, may be promising.
Attentional control mediates fearful responding to an ecologically valid stressor
Richey, John A.; White, Bradley A.; Valdespino, Andrew; Ghane, M.; Schmidt, N. B. (Taylor & Francis, 2016-01-02)
Background and Objectives: Attentional control (AC) is defined as the ability to voluntarily shift and disengage attention, and is thought to moderate the relationship between pre-existing risk factors for fear and the actual experience of fear. Design: This longitudinal study elaborates on current models of attentional control by examining whether AC moderates or mediates effects of an ecologically valid stressor (a college exam), and also whether AC is predictive of state-like fear over longer timescales than previously reported. Methods: Based on previous findings we hypothesized that AC would moderate the relationship between trait anxiety and affective distress in response to the exam stressor. We also tested a competing mediational model based on attentional control theory (Eysenck et al., 2007). These models were tested in two separate samples (Sample 1 N=219; Sample 2 N=129; Total N= 348) at two time points, at the beginning of a college semester in a large undergraduate class, and five minutes prior to a college exam. Results: Mediation but not moderation of anxiety by AC was supported in both samples using multiple dependent measures. Conclusion: We conclude that AC may be useful in predicting affective distress in naturalistic settings, particularly in cases where anxiety is anticipatory.
Behavioral and Neural Substrates of Decision-Making Under Perceptual and Reward Uncertainty: The Role of Task Structure
Ghane-Ezabadi, Merage (Virginia Tech, 2022-01-18)
Real world decision-making requires simultaneously determining what we are observing in our environment (perceptual decision-making; PDM) and what the stimuli and actions are worth (reward-based decision-making; RDM). There is evidence of a bi-directional relationship between reward and perceptual information in guiding choice, with some studies suggesting that individuals optimally combine the two. Uncertainty in both reward expectations and perception have been shown to alter choice behavior, however few studies have manipulated both variables simultaneously. Given the distinct theoretical and computational foundations of PDM and RDM, it has also been assumed that the underlying behavioral and neural substrates of perceptual and reward-based choice are separable. However, there is evidence that task structure and subjective value/uncertainty more generally contribute to activity in large-scale networks of the brain, rather than domain specific features (perceptual salience/reward). Variability in task structures and methods of manipulating and modeling sensory and reward uncertainty, make it hard to draw definitive conclusions across these perspectives with currently available data. The current study used behavioral and fMRI techniques to investigate the neurobehavioral substrates of decision-making under simultaneous perceptual and reward uncertainty in a sample of healthy adult volunteers. The primary objectives of this project were to test: a) how simultaneous manipulations in sensory and reward uncertainty influence choice, b) whether task structure alters the influence of sensory and reward information on choice behavior, and c) whether activity in underlying neural substrates reflect domain-specific or domain-general processes. Results showed that choices were best predicted by a combined model of perceptual salience and reward, with an overall bias towards perceptual salience information. Choice percentage was not impacted by task structure, however choices were better predicted by individual features (salience and reward) when they were manipulated stably, than dynamically. Activity in the brain showed greater overlap between dynamic task conditions when compared to both salience and reward conditions. There was also greater overlap between stable task conditions when compared to reward but not salience conditions. Preliminary evidence suggests that activity in decision-relevant regions of the brain varied by uncertainty and value rather than salience and reward per se.
Can dialectical behavior therapy skills group treat social anxiety disorder? A brief integrative review
Andino, Mara Villalongo; Garcia, Katelyn M.; Richey, John A. (Frontiers Media, 2024-01-08)
The purposes of this brief integrative review are to identify and critically evaluate recent work in the area of Dialectical Behavior Therapy-Skills Group (DBT-SG) for Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) with suicidal ideation (SI) and to suggest further how DBT-based skills may be applied to cognitive maintenance factors of SAD. Accordingly, we first evaluate the relevance of DBT in treating SI in other disorders. Second, we evaluate the relationship between SI and SAD, providing considerations for the complexity of comorbid disorders and presentations. Finally, we extend this knowledge to discuss considerations for the use of DBT-SG skills to target specific etiological and maintenance elements of SAD, with a focus on four themes (interpersonal effectiveness, mindfulness, emotion regulation, and distress tolerance). Overall, we conclude that DBT-SG may prove beneficial in reducing SI and symptoms in SAD that impact social and emotional functioning.
Characterization of Reward Sensitivity, Positive Affect and Working Memory in Socially Anxious Young Adults
Garcia, Katelyn M. (Virginia Tech, 2021-10-12)
Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is a debilitating disorder marked by persistent fear of one or more social or performance situations that is associated with poor daily functioning in various areas of life. Most empirically-supported interventions for SAD are based on cognitive behavioral models that focus largely on reducing negative emotions. However, these approaches produce only modest rates of remission, suggesting that core components of SAD may not be sufficiently targeted by current treatments. Recent theoretical models have suggested that diminished sensitivity to reward may be a specific factor related to low positive affect (PA) and by extension social anxiety, yet no research has systematically examined this relationship. Additionally, working memory has been found to activate dopamine synthesis related to reward, however this relation has not been demonstrated in social anxiety. Accordingly, research proposed here sought to characterize PA and working memory, and determine whether reward sensitivity is altered in a self-reported socially anxious sample of 59 young adults. We hypothesized that social anxiety symptomatology would be inversely correlated with the magnitude of reward sensitivity as measured using the Reward Bias Task (RBT). Results within the full sample did not support our hypothesis; however, an unexpected relationship between PA and working memory emerged. Once using conservative data quality procedures, results indicated that the online version of the reward bias task demonstrated promising relationships with depression and working memory. Additionally, after controlling for depression, the restricted sample demonstrated a relationship between reward bias mean and working memory, and SPIN and diminished PA.
Cognitive and Affective Pathways to Nonsuicidal Self-Injury Among Youth in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study
Antezana, Ligia Danitsa (Virginia Tech, 2022-07-07)
Nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) is the deliberate destruction of one's own body tissue (e.g., cutting, skin picking, biting, hitting) without conscious suicidal intent. Cognitive and affective difficulties may contribute to the development and maintenance of NSSI, such that emotion regulation may mediate the link between cognitive control difficulties and NSSI in youth. This study examined developmental links between cognitive control and emotion regulation on several facets of self-injurious thoughts and behaviors in a large sample of youth, collected via the ABCD Study (N=6447). Although a mediation of emotion regulation on cognitive control and self-injurious thoughts and behaviors was not supported, important direct effects were found between neural correlates of inhibition (at ages 9-10 years) on NSSI at 11-12 years, and behavioral measures of cognitive flexibility (at 10-11 years) and inhibition (at 9-10 years) on suicidality at 11-12 years. Further, links between poorer cognitive control and poorer emotion regulation were found. An exploratory aim of this study was examining the potential moderating role of autistic traits on significant associations. Although greater autistic traits significantly predicted presence of self-injurious thoughts and behaviors, this study did not find a moderation of autistic traits. These results provide developmental risk markers for NSSI and suicidality in youth.
Common and Distinct Neural Mechanisms of Fear Acquisition and Reversal in comorbid Autism with Social Anxiety and Social Anxiety Disorder uncomplicated by Autism
Coffman, Marika C. (Virginia Tech, 2019-08-28)
Social Anxiety (SAD) increases in prevalence as children enter adolescence. Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are diagnosed with comorbid SAD at higher rates than these individuals are diagnosed with other clinical disorders, including depression and other anxiety disorders. However, there is little research on whether the presentation and neural underpinning of comorbid SAD within the context of ASD is the same as SAD alone. Individual and diagnostic differences exist in neural and biological mechanisms of fear conditioning. Characterization of whether neural mechanisms of fear are different within ASD with comorbid SAD and SAD alone may better inform clinical treatments. Accordingly, the present study characterizes neural responses during a fear-inducing experiment, as measured by fMRI. Fifty-seven adolescents participated in this study, with adolescents with ASD and SAD (n=17), SAD alone (n=20), and typically developing adolescents (n=20). All participants completed two fear conditioning and reversal paradigms while completing an fMRI scan. The paradigm consisted of a Social condition and Nonsocial condition. An ANOVA for fear conditioning was conducted. Results revealed significant activation in the Inferior Temporal Gyrus (ITG) during fear conditioning. No between group differences were observed, but within-group differences indicated differential modulation of the ITG in the ASD with SAD group in the Social condition compared to the Nonsocial condition. The SAD group demonstrated differential activation between conditioning stimuli in the Nonsocial condition, but not in the Social condition. Results indicate that adolescents with ASD and SAD may display different neural mechanisms for acquiring fear compared to typically developing peers. Results have potential to inform treatment approaches.
The connection between the triple network model and locus coeruleus integrity in those exhibiting inattentive symptoms
Neal, Joshua (Virginia Tech, 2024-01)
The locus coeruleus (LC) is a nucleus within the brainstem associated with physiological arousal and attention performance, with altered structure and function previously identified in neurodegenerative disorders. Pathologies related to difficulties with attention have previously been understood within a cortical triple network model, abnormalities in which may be relate to dysfunction in either LC structure or function. To examine the possibility of LC alteration being associated with inattentive symptom report, a set of analyses have been performed. In the first analysis, LC neuromelanin contrast was regressed onto ADHD symptom report for 141 individuals across the lifespan, finding a significant negative relationship between neuromelanin in the right hemisphere of the LC and inattentive symptom report. A second analysis tested for possible mediation of the neuromelanin contrasts with structural volumes of regions associated with the salience network, which has also been previously associated with attention deficits and ADHD symptoms. These findings support the relationship between LC and attention-related behavior through both neuromelanin-sensitive and structural imaging, and observes multiple significant structural associations for cortical regions previously associated to inattention functionally.
Control and Effort Costs Influence the Motivational Consequences of Choice
Sullivan-Toole, Holly; Richey, John A.; Tricomi, Elizabeth (Frontiers, 2017-05-03)
The act of making a choice, apart from any outcomes the choice may yield, has, paradoxically, been linked to both the enhancement and the detriment of intrinsic motivation. Research has implicated two factors in potentially mediating these contradictory effects: the personal control conferred by a choice and the costs associated with a choice. Across four experiments, utilizing a physical effort task disguised as a simple video game, we systematically varied costs across two levels of physical effort requirements (Low-Requirement, High-Requirement) and control over effort costs across three levels of choice (Free-Choice, Restricted-Choice, and No- Choice) to disambiguate how these factors affect the motivational consequences of choosing within an effortful task. Together, our results indicated that, in the face of effort requirements, illusory control alone may not sufficiently enhance perceptions of personal control to boost intrinsic motivation; rather, the experience of actual control may be necessary to overcome effort costs and elevate performance. Additionally, we demonstrated that conditions of illusory control, while otherwise unmotivating, can through association with the experience of free-choice, be transformed to have a positive effect on motivation.
Differential Perception of Auditory and Visual Aspects of Emotion in 7- to 15-Month-Old Infants
Kim, Lawrence N. (Virginia Tech, 2018)
Infant-directed registers are emotion communication, conveying feelings and intentions to infants and toddlers that may facilitate and modulate attention and language learning. As infants are attracted to emotion, it is essential to understand how infants process emotional information. This study used an infant-controlled habituation paradigm to examine how 7- to 15-month-old infants discriminate changes in visual emotion, auditory emotion, or visual+auditory emotion after being habituated to a bimodal emotion display. The purpose of this study was to examine which modality (facial emotion; vocal emotion) was more salient for infants to discriminate emotions in the context of bimodal stimulation. Infants were habituated to happy audiovisual displays then received four test trials, during which neither source of emotion information was changed (control), just the auditory emotion was changed, just the visual emotion was changed, or both sources of emotion information were changed. It was predicted that infants would show the greatest recovery of attention to a change in visual emotion than when only visual information was changed, but less than when both auditory and visual information were changed. However, the results showed that infants were equally sensitive to all three types of emotion change. These results are discussed in terms of concurrent conceptualizations of how emotion processing is related to negative bias and experience with two emotions.
Effects of nonsocial and circumscribed interest images on neural mechanisms of emotion regulation in autistic adults
Antezana, Ligia; Coffman, Marika C.; DiCriscio, Antoinette Sabatino; Richey, John A. (Frontiers, 2022-12)
Introduction: Emotion dysregulation is commonly reported among autistic individuals. Prior work investigating the neurofunctional mechanisms of emotion regulation (ER) in autistic adults has illustrated alterations in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) activity, as well as concurrent atypical patterns of activation in subcortical regions related to affect during cognitive reappraisal of social images. Whereas most research examining ER in autism has focused on regulation of negative emotions, the effects of regulating positive emotions has been generally understudied. This is surprising given the relevance of positive motivational states to understanding circumscribed interests (CI) in autism. Methods: Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to use fMRI with simultaneous eye-tracking and pupillometry to investigate the neural mechanisms of ER during passive viewing and cognitive reappraisal of a standardized set of nonsocial images and personalized (self-selected) CI images. Results: The autistic group demonstrated comparatively reduced modulation of posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) activation during cognitive reappraisal of CI images compared to viewing of CI, although no eye-tracking/pupillometry differences emerged between-groups. Further, the autistic group demonstrated increased PCC connectivity with left lateral occipital and right supramarginal areas when engaging in cognitive reappraisal vs. viewing CI. Discussion: In autistic adults, CI may be differentially modulated via PCC. Considering the documented role of the PCC as a core hub of the default mode network, we further postulate that ER of CI could potentially be related to self-referential cognition.
Examining the neurovisceral integration model through fNIRS
Condy, Emma Elizabeth (Virginia Tech, 2018-09-10)
The neurovisceral integration model (NVM) proposes that an organisms ability to flexibly adapt to their environment is related to biological flexibility within the central autonomic network. One important aspect of this flexibility is behavioral inhibition (Thayer and Friedman, 2002). During a behavioral inhibition task, the central autonomic network (CAN), which is comprised of a series of feedback loops, must be able to integrate information and react to these inputs flexibly to facilitate optimal performance. The functioning of the CAN is shown to be associated with respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), as the vagus nerve is part of this feedback system. While the NVM has been examined through neural imaging and RSA, only a few studies have examined these measures simultaneously during the neuroimaging procedure. Furthermore, these studies were done at rest or used tasks that were not targeted at processes associated with the NVM, such as behavior inhibition and cognitive flexibility. For this reason, the present study assessed RSA and neural activation in the prefrontal cortex simultaneously while subjects completed a behavior inhibition task. Using a series of go/no-go tasks, RSA and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) were collected to investigate the relationship between prefrontal activation and vagal activity at rest and during behavioral inhibition. There are three primary aims of this study. First, examine prefrontal activation during various inhibition tasks through fNIRS. Second, evaluate the NVM during a cognitive task using simultaneous fNIRS and RSA analysis. Third, relate task performance, imaging, and RSA measures during behavioral inhibition to deficits in flexible everyday responding, as indicated by self-report measures of behavior. Doing so will elucidate the connection with prefrontal activation and RSA as proposed by the NVM model and determine whether neural and RSA metrics can be related to broader symptoms of inflexibility.
Eye-Gaze Pattern Analysis as a Key to Understanding Co-occurring Social Anxiety within Autism Spectrum Disorder
Maddox, Brenna Burns (Virginia Tech, 2014-10-21)
Emerging research suggests that many adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) experience impairing Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) or social anxiety symptoms (e.g., Joshi et al., 2013; Kleinhans et al., 2010), yet there is little guidance or agreement about how to best assess social anxiety in this population. Direct examination of overt eye gaze patterns may help determine if the attentional biases often reported in people with SAD also operate in those with ASD and co-occurring social anxiety. This study sought to assess the influence of social anxiety on gaze patterns in adults with ASD. An exploratory aim was to better understand the phenomenology of SAD within ASD. Three groups of participants were included: adults with ASD (n = 25), adults with SAD (n = 25), and adults without ASD or SAD (n = 25). As hypothesized, a large subset (n = 11; 44%) of the participants with ASD met diagnostic criteria for SAD. Contrary to study hypotheses related to gaze patterns, however, there was no evidence for gaze vigilance followed by avoidance for socially threatening stimuli in either the ASD or SAD groups, and there was no relationship between fear of negative evaluation and gaze duration toward socially threatening stimuli within the ASD group. Possible reasons for these null findings are considered. Clinical implications and suggestions for future research are also discussed.
Feasibility of Anxiety Assessment for Children with Minimally-Verbal Autism
Muskett, Ashley Elizabeth (Virginia Tech, 2020-06-24)
While it is estimated that 30% of the total Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) population acquire very little or no language (Davis et al., 2011), few studies look at ASD treatment from a mental or emotional health perspective for this minimally verbal (MV) population (Tager-Flusberg and Kasari, 2013). It is well documented that there is a need for anxiety assessment and treatment for children with ASD (White, Oswald, Ollendick and Scahill, 2009). This study examined the feasibility of implementing an observational anxiety assessment and concurrent physiological data collection for children with MV-ASD. It was hypothesized that this measure would demonstrate adequate demand, acceptability, and feasibility to merit further study of the measure. Participants consisted of 12 children with MV-ASD and one parent. Each family visited the clinic for one three-hour visit during which the parent completed several questionnaires to assess the child's eligibility for the study as well as their current functioning. Children completed several clinician-administered assessments and observations. The results of this study suggest that this observational assessment protocol is acceptable and practical per parents self-report and the amount of children able to complete the study protocol, but there may not be enough demand for such a measure based on the number of interested participants. Additionally, the concurrent collection of physiological data was not practical in the current sample due to many children scoring too high on a measure of tactile sensitivity to attempt this data collection. Future studies should more carefully assess demand for this kind of assessment, as well as collect more data on the psychometric properties of such as measure.

Browsing by Author "Richey, John A."

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