Danielle L. Taylor

Wayne State University | WSU · Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences

Introduction: Transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS) may be useful in treating disorders characterized by chronic parasympathetic disinhibition. Acute taVNS decreases resting heart rate in healthy individuals, but little is known regarding the effects of taVNS on the cardiac response to an acute stressor. To investigate effects o...

The contrast avoidance model (CAM) hypothesizes that individuals with chronic worry recruit worry to create and maintain a negative emotional state to avoid sudden increases in negative emotions. Preliminary evidence using the contrast avoidance questionnaires (CAQs) suggests that there might be a similar mechanism across mood and other anxiety dis...

Military sexual trauma (MST) is a common experience in veterans and associated with numerous negative outcomes, such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), diagnostic comorbidity, and impairments in multiple domains, including social functioning. Comorbid social anxiety disorder (SOC) may represent a particularly challenging presentation due to a...

Data indicate that negative anxiety response styles (NARS; anxious rumination and anxious hopelessness) may elevate or generate depressive symptoms among individuals with anxiety, though the nature of this relationship is unclear and has limited support from longitudinal investigations. The current study evaluated the longitudinal effects of NARS o...

Research has documented neurophysiological indicators of anticipation (Stimulus Preceding Negativity [SPN]) and perception (Late Positive Potential [LPP]) of threat, yet little is known as to how self-focused attention manipulations influence emotion processing within the context of cued picture viewing. With self-referent attention moderating atte...

BACKGROUND Anxiety and related treatments target exaggerated escape/avoidance as a core feature, but current methods fail to improve escape/avoidance habits for many treatment seekers. To support developing tools that increase treatment efficacy by targeting mechanisms more directly, current work examines potential distinctions in the neurophysiolo...

The Social Anxiety Questionnaire (SAQ) is a 10-item measure of social anxiety developed to comprehensively and concisely target the mechanisms described in Clark and Wells’ model of social anxiety and address the breadth of social anxiety symptoms which may not all be encompassed in existing questionnaires. The aim of the current studies is to inde...

Models of social anxiety propose that negative self-imagery is a maintenance factor of psychopathology, yet the mechanisms of this relationship are unclear. One proposed mechanism is attention towards self-images. However, self-image creation does not occur in isolation and is likely influenced by other mechanisms, such as anticipatory processing (...

Recent theoretical research posits that a key factor in the development and maintenance of pathological worry is the avoidance of sudden emotional shifts. Recently two self-report instruments were developed to index this phenomenon (Contrast Avoidance Questionnaire-Worry [CAQ-W] and Contrast Avoidance Questionnaire-General Emotion [CAQ-GE]). This w...

Investigations of fear conditioning have recently begun to evaluate contextual factors that affect attention-related processes. However, much of the extant literature does not evaluate how contextual fear learning influences neural indicators of attentional processes during goal-directed activity. The current study evaluated how early attention for...

Theoretical predictions suggest that pathological worry arises from imbalanced cognitive control processes. Empirical literature has demonstrated a relationship between worry and maladaptive cognitive functioning. However, to our knowledge, no study has examined the effects of induced worry on neural indicators of attention. This precludes causal c...

Research attempting to identify pathways from childhood maltreatment to adulthood posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) implicates cognitive vulnerabilities that may increase risk for mental health concerns. The present study examined two cognitive vulnerabilities and their relation to PTSS amongst individuals with and without childhood maltreatment...

Theories have independently postulated that worry (i.e., the core symptom of Generalized Anxiety Disorder) results in decreased attentional control, and that further is associated with emotional dysregulation or maladaptive/inflexible stress responses. However, few studies have evaluated the intersection of these two deficits associated with worry....

Objective: Social anxiety and depression are commonly comorbid and cause significant impairment in college students. Past research suggests that both poor attentional control and increased rumination are related to these disorders and independently mediate their relationship. Theory suggests that social anxiety loads working memory, thus decreasin...

Objective: Data indicate that adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are a risk factor for cognitive and attentional vulnerabilities. A vulnerability linked to these impairments is repetitive negative thinking (RNT), and data suggest that RNT and anxiety symptoms may be moderated by attentional control. The current study investigated the effect of t...

Attentional control has grown in importance within theoretical and predictive models of psychopathology over past decades. The Attentional Style Questionnaire (ASQ) is a novel measure of internal and external attentional control. However, no study has independently validated this questionnaire. Two studies assessed the factor structure for the ASQ...

High social anxiety is associated with increased attentional bias, and difficulties disengaging from relevant threat information, though social anxiety may also be associated with avoidance of threat. Few mechanisms of this relationship have been empirically evaluated, whereas theories and treatment manuals implicate avoidance and/or safety behavio...

Past research suggests that social anxiety is associated with increased processing of cardiac activity. Cognitive theories propose that this is one aspect of self-focus, which is driven by concerns that features of the self, such as anxiety symptoms, will elicit evaluation from others. We investigated the relationship of social anxiety to the corti...

Recent research suggests atypical error-monitoring is important to understanding pathological anxiety. Because uncertainty is a transdiagnostic factor associated with anxiety and related disorders, recent research has begun to examine the influence of uncertainty in error-monitoring. Moreover, task irrelevant threat has been shown to influence cogn...

Recent research highlights the importance of transdiagnostic factors of psychopathology, particularly in understanding comorbidity. Repetitive negative thinking (RNT) is one such factor, which may elucidate anxiety-depression comorbidity. The Response to Anxiety Questionnaire (RAQ) aims to evaluate repetitive negative thinking (RNT) related to anxi...

Repetitive negative thinking (RNT) has been implicated in several disorders (e.g., Clark (2005)). However, little research has examined how RNT influences other risk factors of psychopathology, such as attentional control. This study used prospective methodology to determine if relationships among various RNT styles and symptoms of psychological di...

Self-focused attention is thought to be a key feature of social anxiety disorder. Yet few studies have used ERPs to examine whether socially anxious individuals display greater monitoring of their performance and attention to their errors. Similarly, only a few studies have used ERPs to examine how social anxiety is related to processing of perform...

Research suggests that abnormal performance-monitoring contributes to the etiology and maintenance of anxious pathology. Moreover, the anxiety-performance monitoring relationship appears to be specific to the worry dimension of anxiety. Given that anxiety (and worry in particular) is twice as prevalent in women as men, and most studies to date have...