The Interactive Effects of Anxiety Sensitivity and Emotion Dysregulation in Predicting Anxiety-related Cognitive and Affective Symptoms

Abstract

The present investigation examined the main and interactive effects of anxiety sensitivity (AS) and emotion dysregulation in predicting anxiety-relevant cognitive and affective symptoms among a community-based sample of young adults (n = 242, 135 women; M age = 23.0 years, SD = 8.71). Consistent with hypotheses, the interaction between AS and emotion dysregulation significantly predicted worry, catastrophic cognitions about bodily events, and anxious arousal symptoms above and beyond the respective main effects and negative affectivity; though this interactive effect contributed only 1% of unique variance to each of these criterion variables. Specifically, although the overall effect size for this interaction was small, the highest levels of each criterion variable were (marginally) evidenced by individuals reporting co-occurring high levels of AS and high levels of emotion dysregulation. Also as expected, explanatory specificity for cognitive and emotional symptoms of anxiety was evident, as no interactive effect was apparent for anhedonic depressive symptoms. Furthermore, the main effects of AS and emotion dysregulation, entered concurrently, were significantly incrementally predictive of each of the anxiety-relevant criterion variables; and only emotion dysregulation was significantly predictive of depressive symptoms. Findings are discussed in relation to advancing scientific understanding of anxiety vulnerability from an emotional dysregulation framework.

An Investigation of Factors Associated with Cognitive Avoidance in Worry

“…Anxiety sensitivity has been found to be elevated across the anxiety disorders (e.g., Otto et al 1998;Schmidt et al 1999;Taylor et al 1992), though it has been less closely examined in worry until recently. Similar to the findings with the fear of fear construct, anxiety sensitivity has been demonstrated to correlate with worry (Kashdan et al 2008), even when controlling for negative affect (Vujanovic et al 2007). While these two fear of anxiety constructs are highly similar and to some extent overlapping, the principle distinction is that while fear of fear refers to the fear of losing control of anxiety (or the tendency to perceive emotional experiences, in this case anxiety, as a loss of control), anxiety sensitivity refers to the fear of the perceived negative consequences that are implied by the presence of physiological symptoms of anxiety (i.e., the symptoms of anxiety are perceived as implying that something is wrong).…”

Investigating the relationship between working memory and emotion regulation in mothers

“…Each item is rated on a 1-5 scale, where "1" represents "almost never" and "5" represents "almost always" and higher scores on this measure suggest greater difficulties in ER. As with the past literature, we were principally interested in emotion dysregulation as indexed by a total score across these six domains given the focus of our hypotheses to examine emotion dysregulation as a global construct (Gratz & Roemer, 2004;Malhi et al, 2013;Morelen, Shaffer, & Suveg, 2014;Tull, 2006;Vujanovic, Zvolensky, & Bernstein, 2008). However, given the potential value of understanding the role of the subscales in contributing to global emotion dysregulation, we also included an exploratory correlational analysis of these subscales with our working memory measures.…”

Anxiety sensitivity and post-traumatic stress reactions: Evidence for intrusions and physiological arousal as mediating and moderating mechanisms

“…For example, Lang, Kennedy, and Stein (2002) found significantly higher AS among women who developed PTSD in response to intimate partner violence compared to both those experiencing such violence who did not develop PTSD and women with no trauma history. Research has also shown that AS predicts PTSD symptoms even when controlling for negative affect, trait anxiety, and the number of types of trauma exposures (Kilic, Kilic, & Yilmaz, 2008;Vujanovic, Zvolensky, & Bernstein, 2008).…”