David Valentiner

• PhD UT Austin
• Professor (Full) at Northern Illinois University

This chapter offers guidance for clinicians conducting clinical interviews to assess and diagnose major anxiety disorders, including specific phobias, panic disorder, agoraphobia, social anxiety disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder. The behavioral model offers a compelling conceptualization of each of the major anxiety disorders and offers a...

Both cognitive and metacognitive theories implicate posttraumatic metacognition as an important factor in the maintenance of posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) following stressful life events (SLEs). The Metacognitions Questionnaire-posttraumatic stress disorder (MCQ-PTSD; Wells, 2009) was previously developed to assess for metacognitions specifi...

The ways in which Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) symptoms lead to impairments in functioning, including academic performance, are not well understood. The present study sought to examine the role of a common maladaptive coping strategy, experiential avoidance, as a moderator of the relationship between posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) and...

This study examines select psychometric properties (i.e., internal reliability, and factorial, convergent, discriminant, and criterion validity) of three commonly-used measures of anxiety disorder symptoms in adolescents in the context of multi-trait, multi-method matrix analyses. A sample of 331 adolescents (age M = 17.1; 75.3% white; 71.0% female...

The current studies examine the roles of test anxiety safety behaviors and memory confidence in test performance. In Study 1, 154 college students completed self-report measures, including measures of low memory confidence and reassurance seeking test behavior, and provided access to standardized test scores and information about their academic per...

A sample of Ghanaian (n = 119) and United States (US; n = 70) adolescents was used to examine parental management of peer relationships. Adolescents completed measures of consulting, guiding, parent-adolescent conflict about peers, and social behavior. Compared to US adolescents, Ghanaian adolescents reported higher levels of overt aggression and r...

This investigation used sequential analysis to examine patterns of maternal solicitation and adolescent disclosure that occur in adolescents' and mothers' conversations about peer relationships. An ethnically diverse sample of 68 early adolescents (Mage = 12.39; 51% girls) and their mothers from the United States participated in the investigation....

Obsessive-compulsive (OC) symptoms are more common among survivors of abuse and family disruption. Abuse and family disruption may result in intrusions, which may lead to OC symptom development if followed by obsessive cognitions, metacognitions, or posttraumatic cognitions. This study examined these relationships and tested a model in which the re...

Background: Prior theory and research has implicated disgust as relevant to some, but not all phobias. Aims: The current study examined whether anxiety sensitivity is more relevant to certain specific phobias and whether disgust sensitivity is more relevant to other specific phobias. Method: Participants (n = 201) completed measures of anxiety...

Background: The current study examined whether test-related reassurance seeking is associated with lower scores on a high stakes, standardized test (i.e., the ACT) after controlling for academic performance in high school, and with spoiled answers (i.e., changing correct answers to incorrect) on a subsequent academic exam. Method: Students (N = 59)...

We examined performance on the Multisource Interference Task (MSIT) as a moderator of the relationship between traumatic experience and posttraumatic stress symptom (PTSS) severity. A college sample ( N = 108) completed the MSIT, the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task (WCST), and self-report questionnaires. Both MSIT and WCST performance were examined in...

The purpose of the current studies is to identify safety behavior dimensions relevant to test anxiety, to develop a questionnaire to assess those dimensions, and to examine the validity of that questionnaire. Items were generated from interviews with college students (N = 24). Another sample (N = 301) completed an initial 33-item measure. Another s...

Nearly one-third of individuals in the U.S. will be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder during their lifetime. Receiving that label can evoke self-stigma, with self-stigma relating to greater symptom severity and negatively impacting treatment outcomes. A lesser-studied variable related to self-stigma is etiological attributions about symptoms, incl...

Abstract Implicit personality theories (IPTs) represent the beliefs people hold about the extent to which personality is malleable (i.e., incremental beliefs) versus fixed (i.e., entity beliefs). IPTs influence how individuals process, understand, and respond during social interactions. The research described herein examined (a) whether parents who...

Background: Recognizing that alcohol might affect subsequent processing of trauma-related information, this study examined whether high dose alcohol consumption (HDAC) following a campus mass shooting affected the relation between shooting exposure and post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS). Methods: Female participants (N = 691) recorded levels of...

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is often treated as a discrete diagnostic entity that represents a naturally occurring class, though empirical evidence largely supports a dimensional conceptualization of social fears. Further, the inclusion of a “performance only” specifier in the DSM-5 implies that individuals who experience intense social anxiety e...

The purpose of this investigation was to examine discrepancies among three informants' (adolescents, mothers, and observers) reports of maternal consulting in regard to peer relationships and the relation of the discrepancies to four social adjustment variables (prosocial behavior, loneliness, positive friendship quality, and physical victimization...

This study tested a self-verification model of social anxiety in the context of relationship formation during the transition to college. Incoming college freshmen (N = 68) completed measures of social anxiety and social self-esteem at the beginning of college and 10 weeks later. Using sociometric ratings completed 10 weeks later, relational victimi...

A clinical protocol based on contemporary cognitive behavioral treatment for social anxiety was developed and examined. Previously published instructions for conducting a focus-of-attention behavioral experiment targeting self-focused attention and safety behaviors during exposure were used to create a structured protocol. Individuals (n = 45) with...

Prior research regarding the consequences of mass shootings, as well as trauma more broadly has focused on the development of pathology, particularly posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The amygdala and hippocampus appear to mediate the development of initial PTSD symptoms. This chapter presents a brief overview of the typical response to experie...

Background and objectives: Cognitive-behavioral models highlight the conjoint roles of self-focused attention (SFA), post-event processing (PEP), and performance appraisals in the maintenance of social anxiety. SFA, PEP, and biased performance appraisals are related to social anxiety; however, limited research has examined how SFA affects informat...

This investigation examined the relation between adolescents' reports of mothers' management of peer relationships and adolescents' reports of their own aggressive, prosocial, and playful behaviors. The sample was comprised of 92 adolescents (Mean = 15.41 years) enrolled in a residential summer camp. Higher levels of consulting were related to lowe...

The relation between social anxiety and memory for self-threatening information was investigated in the context of the mnemic neglect paradigm (Sedikides & Green, 2000). It was hypothesized that those high in social anxiety would evince a loss of mnemic neglect: They would show a reduced likelihood of poor memory for central, negative, and self-ref...

Extant stimulus-specific fear measures are limited to a small number of stimuli and contain significantly different content. This article describes 2 studies that develop a more flexible fear measure-the Circumscribed Fear Measure (CFM)-and examine its psychometric properties. In Study 1, participants (N = 771) completed an initial item pool while...

Ninety-two young adults were randomly assigned to watch two episodes of The OCD Project, a reality television program depicting the treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder using exposure therapy, or two episodes of another reality television program (Big Brother). Participants in The OCD Project condition (n = 35) endorsed significantly fewer ne...

Given the equivocal state of the literature as to the symptom-level specificity of the cognitive variable labeled negative problem orientation (NPO), we targeted NPO-symptom relations. A clinical sample (N = 132) of adults diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, mood disorder, or obsessive-compulsive disorder completed self-reports of NPO and symptom t...

Current diagnostic criteria suggest that some individuals experience health anxiety and severe somatic symptoms, whereas others experience health anxiety and either no or mild somatic symptoms. However, to date, our understanding of potential differences among individuals with health anxiety and varying severity of somatic symptoms remains limited....

The widespread use of Mattick and Clarke's (1998) Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (SIAS) and Social Phobia Scale (SPS) led 2 independent groups of researchers to develop short forms of these measures (Fergus, Valentiner, McGrath, Gier-Lonsway, & Kim, 2012; Peters, Sunderland, Andrews, Rapee, & Mattick, 2012). This 3-part study examined the psychom...

This study examines whether self-verification strivings are greater for individuals with elevated features of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) than individuals with minimal features of BPD, and whether this is especially true for those in committed romantic relationships. Participants (N = 329) completed an online questionnaire that included a...

This study examined the roles of self-focused attention and post-event processing in social performance anxiety and social interaction anxiety. College students (N = 101) completed measures of social performance anxiety, social interaction anxiety, self-focused attention, post-event processing, and beliefs related to social anxiety. Interoceptive s...

Wells's (2009) metacognitive theory suggests that inflexible and recurrent styles of thinking in response to negative thoughts, feelings, and beliefs underlie mood and anxiety symptoms. Wells termed such styles of thinking as the cognitive attentional syndrome (CAS). Using a clinical sample (N=132) of patients with either a primary mood or anxiety...

The main aim of this study was to assess the reliability and structural validity of the French version of the 12-item version of the Personal Report of Confidence as Speaker (PRCS), one of the most promising measurements of public speaking fear. A total of 611 French-speaking volunteers were administered the French versions of the short PRCS, the L...

Alexandre Heeren,1,2 Grazia Ceschi,3 David P Valentiner,4 Vincent Dethier,1 Pierre Philippot11Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium; 2National Fund for Scientific Research, Brussels, Belgium; 3Department of Psychology, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland; 4Department of Psychology, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, I...

This study examined the moderating role of shyness mindset on the reduction of social anxiety during exposure-based treatment. Participants (N=60) in an intensive outpatient program for anxiety disorders were assessed at pre- and post-treatment. Social performance anxiety decreased dramatically during treatment, but the amount of decrease differed...

At a general level of abstraction, thought–action fusion (TAF) concerns the idea that thoughts have a tangible impact on reality or one's sense of morality. Borne of the obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) literature, TAF shows empirical relations with symptoms of other psychological disorders, suggesting it is not confined to OCD and may be of bro...

The present study investigated the applicability of Terror Management Theory (TMT) to scrupulosity using a sample of nonclinical college students (N=92). More specifically, we examined whether scrupulosity potentiated the relationship between exposure to conscious reminders of death (i.e., mortality salience) and four variables of interest (mistake...

Mattick and Clarke's (1998) Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (SIAS) and Social Phobia Scale (SPS) are commonly used self-report measures that assess 2 dimensions of social anxiety. Given the need for short, readable measures, this research proposes short forms of both scales. Item-level analyses of readability characteristics of the SIAS and SPS it...

Using a sample of medically healthy college students (N = 412), this study examined whether the two core dimensions of health anxiety share differential relations with orientations (approach and avoidance) to health threat. These two dimensions are an affective dimension marked by health worry and a cognitive dimension marked by disease conviction....

Abstract This study examines whether performance anxiety (PA) is specifically associated with other-evaluation concerns and interaction anxiety (IA) with self-evaluation concerns. Individuals with public speaking fears and high levels of PA or IA were distinguishable from nonanxious controls on measures taken during a public speaking challenge. In...

Using data from a large nonclinical sample (N = 503), the current study examined the convergence and utility of the Short Health Anxiety Inventory (SHAI; Salkovskis et al., in Psychol Med 32:843–853, 2002) and the Multidimensional Inventory of Hypochondriacal Traits (MIHT; Longley et al., in Psychol Assess 17: 3–14, 2005). Results from a higher-ord...

The present study examined whether intolerance of uncertainty (IU) moderates the relationship between catastrophic health appraisals and health anxiety. Specifically, appraisals that ambiguous symptoms are the sign of a catastrophic health concern are proposed to be better tolerated by some individuals (i.e., those with low IU) than others (i.e., t...

The current study examined whether the Avoidance and Fusion Questionnaire for Youth (AFQ-Y; L. A. Greco, W. Lambert, & R. A. Baer, 2008), a self-report measure of psychological inflexibility for children and adolescents, might be useful for measuring psychological inflexibility for adults. The psychometric properties of the AFQ-Y were examined usin...

Subjective and objective reactions to writing and reading a narrative of their experiences after having been recently exposed to a campus shooting were examined in 58 women. Posttraumatic stress, depression, anxiety symptoms, and physical exposure to the shooting were considered in relation to laboratory indices. The latter used a multimethod appro...

A self-verification model of social anxiety views negative social self-esteem as a core feature of social anxiety. This core feature is proposed to be maintained through self-verification processes, such as by leading individuals with negative social self-esteem to prefer negative social feedback. This model is tested in two studies. In Study 1, qu...

This study applies mindset theory to the domain of inhibited social behavior. Incoming college freshmen (N=93) completed web-based assessments upon beginning college and 7months later. Time 1 shyness mindset predicted changes in performance anxiety from Time 1 to Time 2; those who viewed inhibited social behavior as fixed showed increases in perfor...

This study examined the distinctiveness of thought suppression and the suppression of emotional expression. This study also examined the validity of measures of these constructs in predicting self-reported emotional, physical, and cognitive reactions to disgust-eliciting film segments. A total of 156 participants watched one of three disgust-elicit...

Researchers postulate that both shame and guilt are emotions important to anxiety disorders. Extant data, however, indicate that guilt-proneness shares non-significant relationships with psychopathology symptoms after controlling for shame-proneness. To further investigate the relevance of shame and guilt to the anxiety disorders domain, the curren...

The current study uses data from a large nonclinical college student sample (N = 503) to examine a structural model of hypochondriasis (HC). This model predicts the distinctiveness of two dimensions (disease phobia and disease conviction) purported to underlie the disorder, and that these two dimensions are differentially related to variables impor...

Participants were recruited from female undergraduate students participating in an ongoing longitudinal study at the time of a campus shooting. Eighty-five percent (N = 691) of the 812 students who were invited to participate in the current study completed questionnaires an average of 27 days following a campus shooting. In a mixed cross-sectional...

Cognitive theorists maintain that maladaptive cognitions play an important role in the formation and maintenance of social anxiety disorder. The Social Thoughts and Beliefs Scale (STABS; Turner etal. Psychol Assessment 15:384–391, 2003) was developed to assess the broad domain of cognitions associated with social anxiety in a clinical sample. The p...

Cognitive models of social anxiety suggest that fear of negative evaluation (FNE) is the central cognitive dimension underlying the disorder. The Fear of Positive Evaluation Scale (FPES; Weeks, Heimberg, & Rodebaugh, 2008) was recently developed to assess an additional cognitive dimension purported to underlie social anxiety disorder (SAD), but its...

The present study examined utility of the Illness Attitudes Scale (IAS; [Kellner, R. (1986). Somatization and hypochondriasis. New York: Praeger Publishers]) in a non-clinical college sample (N=235). Relationships among five recently identified IAS dimensions (fear of illness and pain, symptom effects, treatment experience, disease conviction, and...

The Disgust Propensity and Sensitivity Scale-Revised (DPSS-R [Pers. Indiv. Differ. 41 (2006) 1241-1252]) is a new assessment tool thought to assess two distinguishable factors contributing to disgust reactions, Disgust Propensity and Disgust Sensitivity. Extant data though indicate the presence of four unreliable DPSS-R items. The present study exa...

The Personal Report of Confidence as a Speaker (PRCS) is a commonly used measure in treatment and research literature to assess people’s fear of public speaking. Despite its frequent usage, limited psychometric data has been published in the last 20 years. Our primary aim was to examine the item factor structure of the PRCS and to see if item elimi...

This study tests explanations of why some people experience intrusive thoughts as problematic, and others experience them as benign. Six-hundred and ninety non-clinical participants completed questionnaires. Results provide support for the hypothesis that the interaction between three variables (i.e., shame-proneness, thought action fusion-morality...

The Body Vigilance Scale (BVS) is a measure developed to assess one's conscious attendance to internal cues. The present report investigated the structure, correlates, and predictive utility of the BVS in nonclinical (N=442) and anxiety (N=135) disorder samples. The findings of Study 1 suggest that the BVS is 1-dimensional in a nonclinical sample,...

Contemporary conceptualizations of hypochondriasis (HC) as severe health anxiety have led to the development of cognitive-behavioral approaches to understanding, assessing, and treating this problem. The Short Health Anxiety Inventory (SHAI) is a new instrument that measures cognitive factors associated with HC. In the present study, we examined th...

A path model was tested in an ethnically diverse sample of 350 college students in which shyness, sociability, and parental support for the college transition were related to loneliness and friendship quality. Furthermore, friendship quality and loneliness were related to depression and anxiety. High levels of shyness, low levels of sociability, an...

This study examines the construct of disgust sensitivity, its relationship with fainting history and anxiety sensitivity, and its incremental validity in predicting responses to disgust-eliciting film stimuli. One-hundred and fifty-six participants completed self-report questionnaires, watched one of three brief (i.e., about 2 min long) film segmen...

We tested several hypotheses derived from the emotional processing theory of fear reduction by manipulating claustrophobic participants' focus of attention during in vivo exposure. Sixty participants displaying marked claustrophobic fear were randomized to one of four exposure conditions. Each participant received a total of 30-min of self-guided e...

This study examines panic attacks and substance use in a sample of incoming college freshman (n = 399 ) using questionnaires. Panickers (n = 47 ) were significantly more likely than nonpanickers (n = 290) to report having ever used sedatives, stimulants, opiods, and other drugs, but not tobacco, alcohol, cocaine, or hallucinogens. Gender and race d...

This study examines the factor structure underlying the Anxiety Sensitivity Index for Children (ASIC. J Anxiety Disord, 12 (1998) 307) in an adolescent sample. Three-hundred-and-eight adolescents, aged 12 to 18, completed the ASIC and measures of anxiety and depression. Factor analysis of the ASIC items resulted in a two-factor structure that is si...

The current study examines the relationships among world assumptions, history of adult sexual assault, depressive symptoms, and fearful attitudes toward relationships. Three hundred and sixty-one female college students completed the Assumptive World Scales and a set of questionnaires to assess their sexual assault history subsequent to age 15, lev...

This study examines the psychometric properties of three recently published anxiety measures, including their incremental validity in predicting adolescent suicidal ideation and behavior. One hundred and eighteen adolescents aged 12-18 completed measures of anxiety, depression, positive and negative affect, and suicidal ideation and behavior. All o...

This article reviews studies of the generalized (CSP) and specific (SSP) subtypes of social phobia, including their onset, course, etiology, comorbid conditions, types of situations feared, reactions (i.e., cognitive, physiological, and behavioral) to feared situations, and response to treatment. Because the differences between CSP and SSP seem dif...

The goal of the present study was to examine the factor structure of the Anxiety Sensitivity Index (ASI; S. Reiss, R. A. Peterson, D M. Gursky, & R. J. McNally, 1986) and the replicability, reliability, and validity of its dimensions in a nonclinical sample. One-thousand-and-seventy-one undergraduate volunteers completed the ASI and a modified vers...

This study tests several tenets of Wells’ meta-cognitive theory of Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD) by using the Meta-Cognitions Questionnaire (MCQ), which was designed to measure meta-cognition in GAD. The MCQ Cognitive Confidence subscale (MCQ-CC) predicted anxiety symptoms even after controlling for both trait anxiety and trait worry. In addit...

This study examines predictions derived from Foa and Kozak's theory of emotional processing. We hypothesized that the provision of heart-rate feedback would facilitate emotional processing through a fuller activation of the participant's fear structure, and by focusing participants' attention on information that is incompatible with the fear struct...

Predictions derived from the two-factor model of psychopathy were examined. Sixty-three male college students completed measures of primary and secondary psychopathy and then watched either a film displaying overt aggression or a neutral film. After viewing the film, self-report ratings of negative and positive consequences for engaging in aggressi...

This study examines panic attacks and substance use in a non-clinical, young adult sample. Two hundred seventy-nine college students completed questionnaires that assessed non-clinical panic attacks, alcohol and drug use behavior, and anxiety and depression symptoms. Non-clinical panickers (n = 25) were significantly more likely than non-panickers...

An exploratory study was conducted of the strategies that schizophrenia patients and their relatives employ to cope with negative symptoms. Coping strategies and their perceived efficacy were elicited in semistructured interviews conducted separately with patients and relatives. Coping responses were coded according to the following dimensions: beh...

Relations between three components of parenting and young adolescent's depressive symptoms were studied in a sample of240 mothers and children (Mean child age = 11. 87, SD = .57). Mothers were selected for having a range of psychopathology (77% had a history of mood disorders). Mothers and children each completed the Children's Rating of Parental B...

This paper reports on two studies that examined predictions derived from Reiss and McNally's (1985) expectancy model of fear behavior and Bandura's (1988) self-efficacy theory. In Study 1 of 138 participants displaying marked claustrophobic fears, scales were developed to measure Suffocation Concerns, Entrapment Concerns, and Coping Self-Efficacy....

The coping behaviors and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms of 215 female assault victims (103 rape victims and 112 nonsexual assault victims) were assessed within 2 weeks following the assault (Time 1), and 133 of them (62%) were followed up 3 months later (Time 2). Posttrauma symptom severity significantly decreased during the 3-month...

The coping behaviors and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms of 215 female assault victims (103 rape victims and 112 nonsexual assault victims) were assessed within 2 weeks following the assault (Time 1), and 133 of them (62%) were followed up 3 months later (Time 2). Posttrauma symptom severity significantly decreased during the 3-month...

This study tested whether alcohol consumption reduces anxiety and panic associated with a panic-challenge procedure. Subjects with panic disorder were randomly assigned to consume either a moderate dose of alcohol or a nonalcoholic placebo. All subjects were told that they were drinking alcohol to control beverage expectancies. Following the bevera...

The purpose of this study was to apply an Integrative predictive model to examine interrelationships among parental support, adaptive coping strategies, and psychological adjustment among late adolescents. Findings using new measures of parental support and adaptive coping with 241 eighteen-year-old college freshmen supported hypotheses. Social sup...

We tested the hypothesis that the perceived availability of safety resources plays an influential role in fear prediction bias. Claustrophobic Ss (N = 37) completed a claustrophobic challenge under conditions of either low or high proximity to safety. Proximity to safety was operationalized as distance from the exit. We examined the effects of prox...

The present study tested predictions derived from Rachman's match-mismatch theory of fear. Students (N = 117) displaying claustrophobic fear made predictions of fear, panic and performance prior to exposure to a claustrophobic chamber. Subjects were then classified into groups (i.e. matchers, overpredictors, underpredictors) based on the congruence...

The purpose of this study was to extend the understanding of how parental support relates to psychological adjustment during the transition from adolescence to young adulthood in a college sample. Ss were 175 college students who had relocated geographically on beginning college. Ss were followed for 2 yrs, beginning from when they were, on average...

An integrative model of mediating and moderating mechanisms in the coping process was examined in a 2-yr prospective framework with 175 college students using both single-group and multigroup LISREL analyses. Consistent with the hypothesized model, initial parental support was associated with subsequent changes in psychological adjustment both dire...

An integrative model of mediating and moderating mechanisms in the coping process was examined in a 2-year prospective framework with 175 college students using both single-group and multigroup LISREL analyses. Consistent with the hypothesized model, initial parental support was associated with subsequent changes in psychological adjustment both di...

The present study examined Reiss and McNally's expectancy model in the prediction of claustrophobic fear, measured across three domains. Non-clinical subjects (N = 117) reporting claustrophobic concerns were administered a behavioral approach test to a claustrophobic chamber. Consistent with the expectancy model, danger expectancy, anxiety expectan...