Abigail Millings

Abigail Millings
Sheffield Hallam University | SHU · Department of Psychology, Sociology and Politics

PhD Psychology

About

96
Publications
30,366
Reads
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1,885
Citations
Additional affiliations
January 2013 - present
The University of Sheffield
Position
  • Lecturer
September 2010 - December 2012
Ultrasis UK Ltd
Position
  • Senior Psychologist
September 2009 - September 2010
University of Bath
Position
  • PostDoc Position
Education
September 2004 - January 2008
University of East Anglia
Field of study
  • Psychology

Publications

Publications (96)
Article
Full-text available
Background: Recent research has shown that insecure attachment, especially attachment anxiety, is associated with poor mental health outcomes, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Other research suggests that insecure attachment may be linked to nonadherence to social distancing behaviours during the pandemic. Aims: The present study aims to...
Article
Full-text available
Whilst both mindfulness and adult attachment have been linked to wellbeing, little is known about how these constructs relate to emotion regulation that can underpin wellbeing. The present study examined the association between adult attachment orientation and emotion regulation (strategies and difficulties) and the mediating role of facets of disp...
Article
Full-text available
Background: Political violence and constraints on liberty of movement can have conse- quences for health and well-being but affect individuals differently. Objective: In three Palestinian samples, we sought to examine the relationship between key environmental and psychological factors and general and mental health, including the previously unexplo...
Article
Full-text available
Background The student mental health landscape in higher education requires preventative strategies that maintain daily functioning as well as early intervention to respond to episodes of mental ill-health. As a community, this requires capturing the needs of students in the general university population as well as those using counselling and psych...
Article
Full-text available
Background Patients can struggle to make good use of psychotherapy owing to deficits in awareness, and digital technologies that support awareness are at a premium. Currently, when patients participate in cognitive analytic therapy (CAT), the technology supporting relational awareness work involves completion of paper-based worksheets as between-se...
Article
We present two studies that together provide preliminary evidence to challenge the view that the relationship between adult attachment and mindfulness is bi-directional (Study 1: repeated measures design and Study 2: a repeated measures study examining the efficacy of attachment security priming and a mindfulness induction). Adult attachment anxiet...
Preprint
We present two studies that together provide preliminary evidence to challenge the view that the relationship between adult attachment and mindfulness is bi-directional (Study 1: repeated measures design and Study 2: a repeated measures study examining the efficacy of attachment security priming and a mindfulness induction). Adult attachment anxiet...
Article
Full-text available
Background There is a disconnect between the ability to swiftly develop e-therapies for the treatment of depression, anxiety, and stress, and the scrupulous evaluation of their clinical utility. This creates a risk that the e-therapies routinely provided within publicly funded psychological health care have evaded appropriate rigorous evaluation in...
Article
Full-text available
Relationship dissolution can cause declines in emotional well-being, particularly if there are children involved. Individuals’ capacity to cope with the pragmatics of the situation, such as agreeing childcare arrangements, can be impaired. Before now, there has been no psychometric test to evaluate individuals’ emotional readiness to cope with thes...
Article
Background: As patients can struggle to make good use of psychotherapy due to deficits in awareness, digital technologies that support awareness are at a premium. Currently, when patients participate in cognitive analytic therapy (CAT), the technology supporting relational awareness work has been via completion of paper-based worksheets as between-...
Article
Full-text available
Background: The usability and effectiveness of conversational agents (chatbots) that deliver psychological therapies is under-researched. Objective: This study aimed to compare the system usability, acceptability, and effectiveness in older adults of 2 Web-based conversational agents that differ in theoretical orientation and approach. Methods:...
Preprint
BACKGROUND As patients can struggle to make good use of psychotherapy due to deficits in awareness, digital technologies that support awareness are at a premium. Currently, when patients participate in cognitive analytic therapy (CAT), the technology supporting relational awareness work has been via completion of paper-based worksheets as between-s...
Preprint
BACKGROUND There has been a lack of MMHealth innovation in technology supporting the delivery of integrative psychotherapies. This project evaluated an app that supports patients being treated with cognitive analytic therapy (CAT) to practice relational awareness. OBJECTIVE To assess the manner in which patients and therapists experienced using th...
Article
Full-text available
Background There has been a lack of technological innovation regarding improving the delivery of integrative psychotherapies. This project sought to evaluate an app designed to replace previous paper-based methods supporting relational awareness and change during cognitive analytic therapy (CAT). Objective We aimed to assess patients’ and therapis...
Article
Despite the vastly increased dissemination of the low-intensity (LI) version of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) for the treatment of anxiety and depression, no valid and reliable indices of the LI-CBT clinical competencies currently exist. This research therefore sought to develop and evaluate two measures: the low-intensity assessment competency...
Article
Full-text available
Background/Objectives Previous research has demonstrated relationships between attachment orientations (expectations of ourselves and others in interpersonal relationships), eating behaviours and obesity. However, such research has been limited to investigations of ‘organised’ forms of attachment orientations (reflecting coherent and predictable p...
Preprint
BACKGROUND The disconnect between the ability to swiftly development e-therapies for the treatment of anxiety and depression and the evaluation of their clinical efficacy, means that many e-therapies in routine use in the National Health Service (NHS) in the United Kingdom have skipped appropriate rigorous evaluation. OBJECTIVE To conduct a meta-a...
Preprint
BACKGROUND Psychological e-therapies can be delivered using conversational agents (“chatbots”) that verbally mimic traditional therapeutic interactions. OBJECTIVE To compare the usability, acceptability and effectiveness in older adults of two web-based conversational agents with differing theoretical foundations. METHODS In a randomised study, N...
Article
Despite the potential of brief online interventions for reducing alcohol consumption, their effectiveness may be compromised by low levels of engagement and the inclusion of ineffective behavior change techniques. To test whether (i) a tunneled version of an intervention (where the content is delivered in a prespecified order) leads to greater enga...
Article
Full-text available
Objective To document the quality of web and smartphone apps used and recommended for stress, anxiety or depression by examining the manner in which they were developed. Design The study was conducted using a survey sent to developers of National Health Service (NHS) e-therapies. Data sources Data were collected via a survey sent out to NHS e-the...
Preprint
BACKGROUND Anxiety and depression continue to be prominent experiences of students approaching their university counseling service. These services face unique challenges to ensure that they continue to offer quality support to a growing student population and with less resource. The convenience and availability of mobile phone applications (apps) o...
Article
Full-text available
Background: Anxiety and depression continue to be prominent experiences of students approaching their university counseling service. These services face unique challenges to ensure that they continue to offer quality support with fewer resources to a growing student population. The convenience and availability of mobile phone apps offer innovative...
Article
The ability to make effective co-parenting agreements and reduce conflict following divorce depends on a person’s emotional state or readiness. This article outlines OPO’s development and piloting of an Emotional Readiness Scale and subsequent digital tool, in collaboration with others. It comprises: a summary of a literature review to identify the...
Article
Full-text available
The primary aim of this study was to examine the underlying relationship between adult attachment, dispositional mindfulness, and emotion regulation, and investigate how well these constructs can predict coping and well-being. A university sample of participants (n = 174) completed an online survey to assess attachment (anxiety, avoidance, disorgan...
Poster
Full-text available
Generation and Rating of the EA Response Bank • Response bank generated by service users via online survey presenting 5 different SU scenarios; • Responses then screened for duplicates and usability by research team and rated by service users via online survey; • Responses then rated by SUs via online survey to generate ratings to be used in develo...
Preprint
Background/Objectives: Previous research has demonstrated relationships between attachment orientations (expectations of ourselves and others in interpersonal relationships), eating behaviours and obesity. However, such research has been limited to investigations of ‘organised’ forms of attachment orientation (reflecting coherent and predictable pa...
Article
Objective: Excessive alcohol consumption, including binge drinking, increases when students enter university. This study tests whether combining messages targeting theory of planned behaviour (TPB) constructs with if-then plans (i.e. implementation intentions) to avoid binge drinking reduces binge drinking in new university students. Design: One mo...
Presentation
In this session the co-design, development and feasibility testing of an 'app' to support clients in cognitive analytic therapy will be presented. The need for this technology has been led by patients. CAT patients become more aware of how they contribute to their own difficulties as the first step in change. This relational awareness is central to...
Article
We sought to understand how attachment orientation influenced attitudes towards different types of psychological therapies. In two studies, we (1) examined attachment orientation as a predictor of attitudes towards different therapies and (2) tested whether attachment security priming could improve attitudes. Study 1 (n = 339) found associations be...
Article
皮肤病会对日常生活,特别是人际关系产生重大影响。然而,无论疾病严重程度如何,有些患者就是比别人更容易受这些问题困扰。有证据表明,患者向朋友和家人寻求支持的程度(“依恋取向”)预示着他们应对慢性疾病的能力,但以前有关皮肤病的研究少之又少。英国谢菲尔德的这些心理学家对此进行了研究。他们在通过大学和患者支持团体招募的206名成人中开展了在线问卷调查。参与者必须已经由医疗专业人士诊断为患有皮肤病,并且在过去6个月中出现症状。使用外表相关痛苦和皮肤相关生活质量(QoL)评分评估了参与者对皮肤病的心理调适。测量了依恋取向的两个维度:对亲密关系的恐惧(“依恋回避”)和对被抛弃的恐惧(“依恋焦虑”)。还研究了2种应对策略的使用:失败主义(例如放弃、拒绝或沉溺于毒品或酒精)和行动主义(幽默、发泄、寻求帮助或制...
Article
Skin conditions can impact significantly on everyday life, particularly relationships. However, some patients are more distressed by these problems than others, regardless of disease severity. There is some evidence that the extent to which patients seek support from friends and family (“attachment orientation”) predicts how well they cope with chr...
Article
Full-text available
Emotions, and emotional expression, have a broad influence on social interactions and are thus a key factor to consider in developing social robots. This study examined the impact of life-like affective facial expressions, in the humanoid robot Zeno, on children’s behaviour and attitudes towards the robot. Results indicate that robot expressions ha...
Article
酒渣鼻是一种导致面部潮红和泛红的皮肤病。只有相对少数的酒渣鼻患者接受专业皮肤科治疗或寻求心理支持。即使这么做,酒渣鼻患者仍感到社交焦虑、沮丧、难堪,而且生活质量下降。尽管多项基于问卷的研究已经分析了酒渣鼻患者可能感受到的苦恼类型,但尚未有研究深入了解患者在遭遇这些可见皮肤问题后的生活感受。鉴于此,该研究通过面对面访谈,来了解参与者身患酒渣鼻后复杂的个人生活感受。该研究使用解释现象学分析 (IPA) 定性方法作为访谈和分析的指导。该研究方法主要关注个体患者,并且已经广泛用于调查患病感受。在该研究中,有九位参与者参加了深度的半结构化访谈。这些访谈围绕三大主题:自我意识,集中关注参与者害怕他人认为自身症状是咎由自取的情况;逃避、掩饰、隐藏情绪,提及其他参与者在出现酒渣鼻时的应对策略;以及治疗不连贯...
Chapter
This chapter discusses the possibility of long-term human relationships with living machines, particularly robots, exploring this concept via psychological research on human-human relationships. The main focus is attachment theory, a general systems perspective on the bond that develops between an infant and its caregiver via a series of systems th...
Article
Background: Skin conditions can be associated with significant psychological distress. Investigation of attachment orientation and associated use of coping strategies is a promising perspective from which to investigate psychological adjustment to skin conditions. Objectives: To examine the role of adult attachment orientation, conceptualised as...
Article
Full-text available
Mindfulness can be measured as an individual trait, which varies between individuals. In recent years, research has investigated the overlap between trait mindfulness and attachment. The aim of the present review and meta-analysis was to investigate the current evidence linking adult attachment dimensions to trait mindfulness dimensions, and to qua...
Article
Full-text available
Background: with reports continually demonstrating increased demand and severity of student mental health needs, it is important to gain a fuller understanding of the impact on embedded student counselling services. Aims: to identify (1) service similarities; (2) factors which impact on services; (3) characteristics of service users; and (4) identi...
Article
Further research is needed to develop psychological interventions for people living with skin condition. This research letter reports on a preliminary evaluation of targeted self-helpa encompassing mindful breathing and compassionate imagery (i.e., evoking a self- compassionate mental images), with the aim of reducing skin specific related distress...
Article
Objectives: Excessive alcohol consumption increases when students enter university. This study tests whether combining (1) messages that target key beliefs from the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) that underlie binge drinking, (2) a self-affirmation manipulation to reduce defensive processing, and (3) implementation intentions (if-then plans to...
Conference Paper
Complex autonomous interactions, biomimetic appearances, and responsive behaviours are increasingly seen in social robots. These features, by design or otherwise, may substantially influence young children’s beliefs of a robot’s animacy. Young children are believed to hold naive theories of animacy, and can miscategorise objects as living agents wi...
Conference Paper
Social robots are becoming more sophisticated; in many cases they offer complex, autonomous interactions, responsive behaviors, and biomimetic appearances. These features may have significant impact on how people perceive and engage with robots; young children may be particularly influenced due to their developing ideas of agency. Young children ar...
Article
Background: Whilst rosacea is a chronic skin condition, the condition can often have a large psychosocial impact on the individual. There is therefore a need to understand the experience of living with rosacea from the patient perspective. Objectives: To examine the experience of living with rosacea and the experience of seeking and receiving tr...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Social robots are becoming more sophisticated; in many cases they offer complex, autonomous interactions, responsive behaviors, and biomimetic appearances. These features may have significant impact on how people perceive and engage with robots; young children may be particularly influenced due to their developing ideas of agency. Young children ar...
Article
Full-text available
Background: University counselling services face a unique challenge to offer short-term therapeutic support to students presenting with complex mental health needs, and in a setting which suits the academic timetable. The recent availability of mobile phone applications (apps) offer an opportunity to supplement face-to-face therapy and have the pot...
Article
Full-text available
Objective: To document the range of web and smartphone apps used and recommended for stress, anxiety or depression by the National Health Service (NHS) in England. Design: The study was conducted using Freedom of Information (FOI) requests and systematic website searches. Data sources: Data were collected via FOI requests to NHS services betwe...
Article
OBJECTIVE: To document the range of web and smartphone apps used and recommended for stress, anxiety or depression by the National Health Service (NHS) in England. DESIGN: The study was conducted using Freedom of Information (FOI) requests and systematic website searches. DATA SOURCES: Data were collected via FOI requests to NHS services between 13...
Article
Background: The burden and severity of student mental health continues to increase in parallel with increasing financial pressures on students and services alike. There is a need for a student-specific measure of distress that acknowledges their unique context. This study examined the feasibility, acceptance, and initial psychometric properties of...
Article
Full-text available
Automatic speech recognition (ASR) allows a natural and intuitive interface for robotic educational applications for children. However there are a number of challenges to overcome to allow such an interface to operate robustly in realistic settings, including the intrinsic difficulties of recognising child speech and high levels of background noise...
Conference Paper
The Expressive Agents for Symbiotic Education and Learning project explores human-robot symbiotic interaction with the aim to understand the development of symbiosis over long-term tutoring interactions. The final EASEL system will be built upon the neurobiologically grounded architecture - Distributed Adaptive Control. In this paper, we present th...
Conference Paper
This paper explores three fundamental attributes of the Robokind Zeno-R25 (its status as person or machine, its ‘gender’, and intensity of its simulated facial expressions) and their impact on children’s perceptions of the robot, using a one-sample study design. Results from a sample of 37 children indicate that the robot is perceived as being a mi...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
A key challenge in developing engaging social robots is creating convincing, autonomous and responsive agents, which users perceive, and treat, as social beings. As a part of the collaborative project: Expressive Agents for Symbiotic Education and Learning (EASEL), this study examines the impact of autonomous response to children’s speech, by the h...
Article
A key challenge in developing engaging social robots is creating convincing, autonomous and responsive agents, which users perceive, and treat, as social beings. As a part of the collaborative project: Expressive Agents for Symbiotic Education and Learning (EASEL), this study examines the impact of autonomous response to children's speech, by the h...
Article
Full-text available
Despite being a universal human attachment behavior, little is known about individual differences in crying. To facilitate such examination we first recommend shortened versions of the attitudes and proneness sections of the Adult Crying Inventory using two independent samples. Importantly, we examine attachment orientation differences in crying pr...
Article
Full-text available
Attachment theory posits that insecure attachment orientations reflect activation of the attachment behavioural system, and therefore deactivation of its complementary counterpart the exploration system, which is associated with feeling less energized. We hypothesized that less perceived social support and higher fatigue would prospectively explain...
Article
Full-text available
Mindfulness practice has many mental and physical health benefits but can be perceived as ‘difficult’ by some individuals. This perception can discourage compliance with mindfulness meditation training programs. The present research examined whether the activation of thoughts and feelings related to attachment security and self-compassion (through...
Article
Full-text available
The psychological impacts of living with a skin condition have been widely acknowledged. Provision of psychological support is crucial in improving wellbeing and symptoms among both adults and children with skin conditions. The aim of this brief survey — which is part of a wider study — was to investigate General Practitioners’ provision of psychos...
Article
Full-text available
This Evidence Check review examined the effectiveness of specific behaviour change techniques (BCTs) delivered by telephone in two areas: promoting healthy weight; and supporting parents. The review found that telephone-delivered interventions to promote healthy weight can be effectively used to change physical activity levels and improve diet. Int...
Article
Full-text available
Computerised cognitive behavioural therapy provides a unique opportunity to collect and analyse data regarding the idiosyncratic content of people's core beliefs about the self, others and the world. 'Beating the Blues' users recorded a core belief derived through the downward arrow technique. Core beliefs from 1813 mental health patients were code...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Models of children's cognitive development indicate that as children grow, they transition from using behavioral cues to knowledge of biology to determine a target's animacy. This paper explores the impact of children's' ages and a humanoid robot's expressive behavior on their perceptions of the robot, using a simple, low-demand measure. Results in...
Article
computerised cognitive behavioural therapy provides a unique opportunity to collect and analyse data regarding the idiosyncratic content of people’s core beliefs about the self, others and the world. Methods: ‘Beating the Blues’ users recorded a core belief derived through the downward arrow technique. Core beliefs from 1813 mental health patient...
Article
Full-text available
Anxiety and insomnia can be treated with internet-delivered Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (iCBT). ICBT may be well-suited to students, who are known to be poor help-seekers and suffer these symptoms. ICBT can offer easy access to treatment and increase service availability. The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of anxiety and insomnia...
Article
Full-text available
Background: Internet interventions for mental health concerns are known to be effective, but how can developing technology be utilised to improve engagement and augment the effectiveness of these programs? One option might be to incorporate feedback about the user's physiological state into the program, via wearable sensors. Objectives: This mixed-...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Emotions, and emotional expression, have a broad influence on the interactions we have with others and are thus a key factor to consider in developing social robots. As part of a collaborative EU project, this study examined the impact of lifelike affective facial expressions, in the humanoid robot Zeno, on children's behavior and attitudes towards...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Robots are being designed to provide companionship, but there is some concern that they could lead to a reduction in human contact for vulnerable populations. However, some field data suggests that robots may have a social mediation effect in humanhuman interactions. This study examined social mediation effects in a controlled laboratory setting. I...
Article
Full-text available
BackgroundA substantial minority of adolescents suffer from depression and it is associated with increased risk of suicide, social and educational impairment, and mental health problems in adulthood. A recently conducted randomized controlled trial in England evaluated the effectiveness of a manualized universally delivered age-appropriate CBT prog...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
How people use assistive technologies depends on how they relate to them. As technologies such as assis