title: Towards an emotional 'stress test': a reliable, non-subjective cognitive measure of anxious responding.
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.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, UCL, 17-19 Queen Square, London, WC1N 3AZ, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Jessica
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Aylward
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, UCL, 17-19 Queen Square, London, WC1N 3AZ, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Oliver J
authors.initials: OJ
authors.lastname: Robinson
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001007:Anxiety / Q000175:diagnosis*; D003955:Diagnostic Tests, Routine / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D064368:Healthy Volunteers; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000175:diagnosis*; D055815:Young Adult