Scholarly Works, Psychology

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A 4-year longitudinal neuroimaging study of cognitive control using latent growth modeling: developmental changes and brain-behavior associations
Kim-Spoon, Jungmeen; Herd, Toria; Brieant, Alexis; Elder, Jacob; Lee, Jacob; Deater-Deckard, Kirby; Casas, Brooks (2021-08-15)
Despite theoretical models suggesting developmental changes in neural substrates of cognitive control in adolescence, empirical research has rarely examined intraindividual changes in cognitive control-related brain activation using multi-wave multivariate longitudinal data. We used longitudinal repeated measures of brain activation and behavioral performance during the multi-source interference task (MSIT) from 167 adolescents (53% male) who were assessed annually over four years from ages 13 to 17 years. We applied latent growth modeling to delineate the pattern of brain activation changes over time and to examine longitudinal associations between brain activation and behavioral performance. We identified brain regions that showed differential change patterns: (1) the fronto-parietal regions that involved bilateral insula, bilateral middle frontal gyrus, left pre-supplementary motor area, left inferior parietal lobule, and right precuneus; and (2) the rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC) region. Longitudinal confirmatory factor analyses of the fronto-parietal regions revealed strong measurement invariance across time implying that multivariate functional magnetic resonance imaging data during cognitive control can be measured reliably over time. Latent basis growth models indicated that fronto-parietal activation decreased over time, whereas rACC activation increased over time. In addition, behavioral performance data, age-related improvement was indicated by a decreasing trajectory of intraindividual variability in response time across four years. Testing longitudinal brain-behavior associations using multivariate growth models revealed that better behavioral cognitive control was associated with lower fronto-parietal activation, but the change in behavioral performance was not related to the change in brain activation. The current findings suggest that reduced effects of cognitive interference indicated by fronto-parietal recruitment may be a marker of a maturing brain that underlies better cognitive control performance during adolescence.
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.
A machine-learning approach for differentiating borderline personality disorder from community participants with brain-wide functional connectivity
Lahnakoski, Juha M.; Nolte, Tobias; Solway, Alec; Vilares, Iris; Hula, Andreas; Feigenbaum, Janet; Lohrenz, Terry; Casas, Brooks; Fonagy, Peter; Montague, P. Read; Schilbach, Leonhard (Elsevier, 2024-05-26)
Background: Functional connectivity has garnered interest as a potential biomarker of psychiatric disorders including borderline personality disorder (BPD). However, small sample sizes and lack of within-study replications have led to divergent findings with no clear spatial foci. Aims: Evaluate discriminative performance and generalizability of functional connectivity markers for BPD. Method: Whole-brain fMRI resting state functional connectivity in matched subsamples of 116 BPD and 72 control individuals defined by three grouping strategies. We predicted BPD status using classifiers with repeated cross-validation based on multiscale functional connectivity within and between regions of interest (ROIs) covering the whole brain—global ROI-based network, seed-based ROI-connectivity, functional consistency, and voxel-to-voxel connectivity—and evaluated the generalizability of the classification in the left-out portion of non-matched data. Results: Full-brain connectivity allowed classification (∼70 %) of BPD patients vs. controls in matched inner cross-validation. The classification remained significant when applied to unmatched out-of-sample data (∼61–70 %). Highest seed-based accuracies were in a similar range to global accuracies (∼70–75 %), but spatially more specific. The most discriminative seed regions included midline, temporal and somatomotor regions. Univariate connectivity values were not predictive of BPD after multiple comparison corrections, but weak local effects coincided with the most discriminative seed-ROIs. Highest accuracies were achieved with a full clinical interview while self-report results remained at chance level. Limitations: The accuracies vary considerably between random sub-samples of the population, global signal and covariates limiting the practical applicability. Conclusions: Spatially distributed functional connectivity patterns are moderately predictive of BPD despite heterogeneity of the patient population.
Access to Autism Spectrum Disorder Services for Rural Appalachian Citizens
Scarpa, Angela; Jensen, Laura S.; Gracanin, Denis; Ramey, Sharon L.; Dahiya, Angela V.; Ingram, L. Maria; Albright, Jordan; Gatto, Alyssa J.; Scott, Jen Pollard; Ruble, Lisa (2020-01)
Background: Low-resource rural communities face significant challenges regarding availability and adequacy of evidence-based services. Purposes: With respect to accessing evidence-based services for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), this brief report summarizes needs of rural citizens in the South-Central Appalachian region, an area notable for persistent health disparities. Methods: A mixed-methods approach was used to collect quantitative and qualitative data during focus groups with 33 service providers and 15 caregivers of children with ASD in rural southwest Virginia. Results: Results supported the barriers of availability and affordability of ASD services in this region, especially relating to the need for more ASD-trained providers, better coordination and navigation of services, and addition of programs to assist with family financial and emotional stressors. Results also suggested cultural attitudes related to autonomy and trust towards outside professionals that may prevent families from engaging in treatment. Implications: Relevant policy recommendations are discussed related to provider incentives, insurance coverage, and telehealth. Integration of autism services into already existing systems and multicultural sensitivity of providers are also implicated.
Acquired German Accent: A Functional Neural Systems Approach to Foreign Accent Syndrome
Harrison, Patti Kelly; Klineburger, Philip C.; Campbell, Ransom W.; Harrison, David W. (2016-01-27)
First described by French neurologist Pierre Marie in 1907, foreign accent syndrome (FAS) is a rare speech disorder in which individuals take on, what is perceived by observers, to be a distinct accent differing in many respects from the individual’s native accent. FAS has been of great interest in the neuropsychological literature because its unique features have challenged our understanding of the neural systems underlying the production of speech, shedding light on neural structures that had previously not been regarded as integral to speech production. In the approximately 60 reported cases of FAS, nearly all have involved a stroke or traumatic brain injury resulting in relatively small lesions (in comparison with one resulting in expressive aphasia) of the language dominant hemisphere in the prerolandic motor cortex, insular cortex, the frontal motor association cortex, and/or the striatum of the language dominant hemisphere (Blumstein & Kurowski, 2006). Several FAS cases with neuroimaging data have also shown lesions of the frontoparietal regions, right hemisphere, basal ganglia, and the right cerebellum (Marien, Verhoeven, Engelborghs, Rooker, Pickut, & De Deyn, 2006).
Adaptation aftereffects reveal how categorization training changes the encoding of face identity
Soto, Fabian A.; Escobar, Karla; Salan, Jefferson (2020-10)
Previous research suggests that learning to categorize faces along a novel dimension changes the perceptual representation of such dimension, increasing its discriminability, its invariance, and the information used to identify faces varying along the dimension. A common interpretation of these results is that categorization training promotes the creation of novel dimensions, rather than simply the enhancement of already existing representations. Here, we trained a group of participants to categorize faces that varied along two morphing dimensions, one of them relevant to the categorization task and the other irrelevant to the task. An untrained group did not receive such categorization training. In three experiments, we used face adaptation aftereffects to explore how categorization training changes the encoding of face identities at the extremes of the category-relevant dimension and whether such training produces encoding of the category-relevant dimension as a preferred direction in face space. The pattern of results suggests that categorization training enhances the already existing norm-based coding of face identity, rather than creating novel category-relevant representations. We formalized this conclusion in a model that explains the most important results in our experiments and serves as a working hypothesis for future work in this area.
Additional evidence that valence does not affect serial recall
Guitard, Dominic; Neath, Ian; Saint-Aubin, Jean (Sage, 2022-09)
In immediate serial recall, a canonical short-term memory task, it is well established that performance is affected by several sublexical, lexical, and semantic factors. One factor that receives a growing interest is valence, whether a word is categorised as positive (e.g., happy) or as negative (e.g., pain). However, contradictory findings have recently emerged. Tse and Altarriba in two experiments with one set of stimuli and fixed lists concluded that valence affects serial recall performance, while Bireta et al. in three experiments with three sets of stimuli and randomised lists concluded that valence does not affect serial recall performance. Two experiments assessed the experimental discrepancy between Tse and Altarriba and Bireta et al. For both experiments, in one block, every participant saw the exact same lists as those used in Tse and Altarriba, and in the other block, each list was randomly constructed for each participant, as was done in Bireta et al. In Experiment 1, with concrete words varying in valence, we replicated the results of Tse and Altarriba with fixed lists and the results of Bireta et al. with randomised lists. In Experiment 2, with abstract words with both fixed and randomised lists, we replicate the absence of effect valence like Tse and Altarriba and Bireta et al. Overall, we conclude that valence does not affect serial recall and the discrepancy was attributed to the peculiarity of the fixed lists used by Tse and Altarriba.
Adolescent Emotionality and Emotion Regulation in the Context of Parent Emotion Socialization Among Adolescents with Neurodevelopmental Disorders: A Call to Action with Pilot Data
Breaux, Rosanna; Eadeh, Hana-May; Swanson, Courtney S.; McQuade, Julia D. (Springer, 2021-06-30)
To date, only three studies have examined the role of emotion socialization in the emotional functioning of youth with neurodevelopmental disorders. As such, this review article with pilot data sought to provide a call to action and first step in addressing this limited research body. Pilot data was collected with 18 adolescents (Mage = 13.5, SD = 1.6; 70% male) with a neurodevelopmental disorder and their primary caregiver. All adolescents were diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and displayed a range of comorbid disorders: autism spectrum disorder (27.8%), anxiety (66.7%), depression (44.4%), and disruptive behavior disorders (50%). Adolescents and caregivers completed a conflict discussion task while physiological, observational, and self-report measures of emotion socialization and emotional functioning were measured. Observed supportive parent emotion socialization behaviors were significantly associated with more observed adaptive emotion regulation strategies, and decreased observed and adolescent-reported negative affect, whereas non-supportive emotion socialization behaviors were associated with more observed negative affect and less observed adaptive emotion regulation strategies. Our pilot findings support growing research suggesting that adaptive parent emotion socialization practices can help foster less negative emotionality and better emotion regulation in youth with neurodevelopment disorders. We make a call to action for more emotion socialization research focused on youth with neurodevelopmental disorders, and propose four important directions for future research: 1) Research examining emotion socialization behaviors during daily life, 2) Understanding the nuanced role of emotion socialization practices, 3) Considering diversity in emotion socialization practices with clinical populations, and 4) Longitudinal and intervention research studies.
Age-Related Intrinsic Functional Connectivity Changes of Locus Coeruleus from Childhood to Older Adults
Song, Inuk; Neal, Joshua; Lee, Tae-Ho (MDPI, 2021-11-10)
The locus coeruleus is critical for selective information processing by modulating the brain’s connectivity configuration. Increasingly, studies have suggested that LC controls sensory inputs at the sensory gating stage. Furthermore, accumulating evidence has shown that young children and older adults are more prone to distraction and filter out irrelevant information less efficiently, possibly due to the unoptimized LC connectivity. However, the LC connectivity pattern across the life span is not fully examined yet, hampering our ability to understand the relationship between LC development and the distractibility. In this study, we examined the intrinsic network connectivity of the LC using a public fMRI dataset with wide-range age samples. Based on LC-seed functional connectivity maps, we examined the age-related variation in the LC connectivity with a quadratic model. The analyses revealed two connectivity patterns explicitly. The sensory-related brain regions showed a positive quadratic age effect (u-shape), and the frontal regions for the cognitive control showed a negative quadratic age effect (inverted u-shape). Our results imply that such age-related distractibility is possibly due to the impaired sensory gating by the LC and the insufficient top-down controls by the frontal regions. We discuss the underlying neural mechanisms and limitations of our study.
Aging and the Social Cognitive Determinants of Physical Activity Behavior and Behavior Change: Evidence from the Guide to Health Trial
Anderson-Bill, Eileen Smith; Winett, Richard A.; Wojcik, Janet R.; Williams, David M. (Hindawi, 2011-04-28)
Part one of this study investigated the effect of aging on social-cognitive characteristics related to physical activity (PA) among adults in the baseline phase of a health promotion intervention. Participants' questionnaire responses and activity logs indicated PA levels and self-efficacy declined with age, while social support and the use of self-regulatory behaviors (e.g., goal setting, planning, and keeping track) increased. With age participants were also less likely to expect PA to interfere with their daily routines and social obligations. Part two of the study was among overweight/obese, inactive participants completing the intervention; it examined whether improvements in psychosocial variables might counteract declining PA associated with age. After treatment, participants were more active and decreased body weight regardless of age, and improved self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and self-regulatory behaviors. In a causal model, increases in self-efficacy at 7-months lead to increased PA levels and, albeit marginally, weight loss at 16 months; increased PA was associated with greater weight loss. Aging adults who were more confident exercised more and as a result lost more weight. This longitudinal study suggests interventions that offset the effect of aging on self-efficacy may be more successful in helping older participants become more active and avoid weight gain.
The AI-IP: Minimizing the guesswork of personality scale item development through artificial intelligence
Hernandez, Ivan; Nie, Weiwen (Wiley, 2022)
We propose a framework for integrating various modern natural language processing (NLP) models to assist researchers with developing valid psychological scales. Transformer-based deep neural networks offer state-ofthe- art performance on various natural language tasks. This project adapts the transformer model GPT-2 to learn the structure of personality items, and generate the largest openly available pool of personality items, consisting of one million new items. We then use that artificial intelligencebased item pool (AI-IP) to provide a subset of potential scale items for measuring a desired construct. To better recommend construct-related items, we train a paired neural network-based classification BERT model to predict the observed correlation between personality items using only their text. We also demonstrate how zero-shot models can help balance desired content domains within the scale. In combination with the AI-IP, these models narrow the large item pool to items most correlated with a set of initial items. We demonstrate the ability of this multimodel framework to develop longer cohesive scales from a small set of construct-relevant items. We found reliability, validity, and fit equivalent for AI-assisted scales compared to scales developed and optimized by traditional methods. By leveraging neural networks’ ability to generate text relevant to a given topic and infer semantic similarity, this project demonstrates how to support creative and open-ended elements of the scale development process to increase the likelihood of one’s initial scale being valid, and minimize the need to modify and revalidate the scale.
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.
Altered reward system reactivity for personalized circumscribed interests in autism
Kohls, Gregor; Antezana, Ligia; Mosner, Maya G.; Schultz, Robert T.; Yerys, Benjamin E. (2018-01-30)
Background Neurobiological research in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) has paid little attention on brain mechanisms that cause and maintain restricted and repetitive behaviors and interests (RRBIs). Evidence indicates an imbalance in the brain’s reward system responsiveness to social and non-social stimuli may contribute to both social deficits and RRBIs. Thus, this study’s central aim was to compare brain responsiveness to individual RRBI (i.e., circumscribed interests), with social rewards (i.e., social approval), in youth with ASD relative to typically developing controls (TDCs). Methods We conducted a 3T functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study to investigate the blood-oxygenation-level-dependent effect of personalized circumscribed interest rewards versus social rewards in 39 youth with ASD relative to 22 TDC. To probe the reward system, we employed short video clips as reinforcement in an instrumental incentive delay task. This optimization increased the task’s ecological validity compared to still pictures that are often used in this line of research. Results Compared to TDCs, youth with ASD had stronger reward system responses for CIs mostly within the non-social realm (e.g., video games) than social rewards (e.g., approval). Additionally, this imbalance within the caudate nucleus’ responsiveness was related to greater social impairment. Conclusions The current data support the idea of reward system dysfunction that may contribute to enhanced motivation for RRBIs in ASD, accompanied by diminished motivation for social engagement. If a dysregulated reward system indeed supports the emergence and maintenance of social and non-social symptoms of ASD, then strategically targeting the reward system in future treatment endeavors may allow for more efficacious treatment practices that help improve outcomes for individuals with ASD and their families.
Angry rumination and effortful control: Mediating effects on reactive but not proactive aggression
White, Bradley A.; Turner, K. Amber (2013-08-01)
Anger rumination and self-regulation deficits have been previously identified as risk factors for aggression. We hypothesized that anger rumination would relate to reactive but not proactive aggression, and that this association would be mediated by lower levels of trait selfregulation. Undergraduate students (N = 359) completed self-report measures of anger rumination, effortful control, and aggression. Mediation was tested using PROCESS (Hayes, 2012). After controlling for proactive aggression, anger rumination was associated with reactive aggression, and this relationship was partially mediated by effortful control. Anger rumination was also uniquely related to proactive aggression, but without mediation by effortful control. Gender did not moderate these relationships. Effortful control may be a viable treatment target for reactive aggression, whereas addressing anger rumination may help reduce both reactive and proactive aggression.
Anxiety and initial value dependence in startle habituation
Faunce, Jules Alex; Blumenthal, Terry D.; Waugh, Christian E. (Wiley, 2022)
Studies suggest that deficits in startle reflex habituation occur in trait and clinical anxiety. Measures of habituation are affected by the magnitude of the initial response, with larger initial responses predicting a steeper decline in response over repeated trials. This relationship between initial value and change, commonly called the Law of Initial Value or initial value dependence (IVD), has been partialled out as a covariate in habituation research, but variation in IVD may be informative in itself, reflecting differences in physiological reactivity. The present study explored how trait anxiety and contextual anxiety relate to habituation kinetics of the startle eyeblink response: initial value, linear habituation slope, and the relationship between them (IVD). Participants (n = 31; 15 Control, 16 Contextual Anxiety [CA]) were exposed to two blocks of acoustic startle stimuli, and CA participants were warned that they may receive an electrical shock to the wrist during block 2. Trait anxiety did not predict habituation slope, but it did predict a weaker IVD relationship, meaning that high initial startle magnitude was less predictive of a steep response decline in trait-anxious subjects. Meanwhile, CA did not impact startle habituation or IVD. The results suggest that individual differences in trait anxiety are related to the relationship between initial physiological response magnitude and subsequent change in response. IVD in startle habituation may thus serve as a better biomarker of healthy emotional responding than startle habituation per se.
Anxiety Disorders and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders (OCD)
Maddox, Brenna B.; Kerns, Connor M.; Franklin, Martin E.; White, Susan W. (Springer, 2016-02-04)
Anxiety is known to be a commonly, co-occurring phenomenon with autism. Also, in daily practice, these symptoms often are confused with core symptoms of autism. Accurately determining OCD and anxiety from autism has important implications for treatment. This chapter reviews current methods and procedures available to help make these distinctions.
Associations between Parental Anxiety/Depression and Child Behavior Problems Related to Autism Spectrum Disorders: The Roles of Parenting Stress and Parenting Self-Efficacy
Rezendes, Debra L.; Scarpa, Angela (Hindawi, 2011-12-13)
Parents of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) have been shown to experience increases in stress, depression, and anxiety, which are also associated with child behavior problems related to ASDs. Literature-examining potential mechanisms that underlie the relationship of child behavior problems and parental anxiety/depression in this population are scarce. The current study sought to examine the roles of parenting stress and parenting self-efficacy as mediators between child behavior problems and parental anxiety/depression. Using a sample of 134 mothers, these potential mediators were tested. Hypotheses were supported, indicating that parenting stress mediated the relationship between child behavior problems and decreased parenting self-efficacy, and decreased parenting self-efficacy in turn partially mediated the relationship between parenting stress and increased depression/anxiety.
Associations between peer attachment and neural correlates of risk processing across adolescence
Asscheman, J. Susanne; Deater-Deckard, Kirby; Lauharatanahirun, Nina; van Lier, Pol A. C.; Koot, Susanne; Casas, Brooks; Kim-Spoon, Jungmeen (2020-04)
Adolescence is a period of increased risk-taking behavior where individual differences in risk taking may relate to both adverse and positive experiences with peers. Yet, knowledge on how risk processing develops in the adolescent brain and whether this development is related to peer attachment is limited. In this longitudinal functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, we collected data from 167 adolescents (53% male) followed for four annual assessments across ages 13-17 years. At each assessment, participants completed a lottery choice task to assess neural risk processing and reported on their perceived attachment to peers and parents. Behaviorally, risk-preference on the lottery choice task decreased linearly with age. Neural activation during risk processing was consistently found in the insula and dACC across the four assessments and increased linearly from ages 13-17 years. Furthermore, higher peer attachment was related to greater right insula risk processing for males but not for females, even after controlling for parental attachment. The magnitudes of this association did not change with age. Findings demonstrate that neural risk processing shows maturation across adolescence and high peer attachment may be associated with low risk taking by heightening neural sensitivity to potential risks for male adolescents.
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.
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.

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