Maree J. Abbott

The University of Sydney · Clinical Psychology Unit (CPU)

Objective At present there is no clear, cohesive, and comprehensive theoretical understanding of the role of core beliefs in the development of disordered eating. The present study aimed to develop and test a theoretical model outlining important processes and pathways from core beliefs to eating disorder (ED) behaviours. It also aimed to explore p...

Overnight observations of mental health inpatients have been criticised for interrupting inpatients' sleep and potentially undermining recovery. No studies have examined the perceptions of mental health nurses who complete overnight observations, limiting key information necessary to guide improvements. This study aims to understand mental health n...

Staff perceptions of inpatient psychiatric hospitals ultimately impact a range of organisational and care‐related variables, including staff retention and quality of care for inpatients. The aim of this study was to conduct a meta‐review to synthesise themes reported by staff to influence their perceptions of inpatient psychiatric hospitals. The re...

The Metacognitions Questionnaire – Short Form (MCQ-30) was designed as a parsimonious measure of the metacognitive beliefs and processes implicated in the maintenance of Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD). The present study sought to examine the psychometric properties and clinical utility of the MCQ-30 among people with GAD. One hundred and thirty...

Background Although eating disorder (ED) models display some differences in theory and treatment approach, cognitive-behavioural, schema-focused, and disorder-specific models all highlight the fundamental nature of cognitions as key factors in ED development and maintenance processes. As such, it is vital that ED cognitions continue to be assessed...

Increased negative rumination is a cognitive process understood to maintain social anxiety disorder (SAD). The Socially Anxious Rumination Questionnaire (SARQ) is a measure with two parallel versions that reflect pre-event rumination (i.e., SARQ-pre) and post-event rumination (i.e., SARQ-post). Given that anxiety in SAD can pertain to both performa...

Research has demonstrated a strong link between intolerance of uncertainty and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). The current systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to evaluate how effective evidence-based psychological treatments are at reducing intolerance of uncertainty for adults with GAD. An extensive literature search identified 26 eligib...

Objective The revised Eating Disorder Core Beliefs Questionnaire (ED-CBQ-R) is a 15-item self-report questionnaire which assesses the endorsement of underlying core beliefs relevant to eating disorders. As this measure has not yet been validated in a secondary sample since its development, the current study aimed to evaluate the factor structure, v...

Cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) for young people with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) has recently been enhanced to target family environment factors. However, the process of change for OCD symptoms and family factors during treatment is not well understood. Uniquely, we explored patterns of change for OCD symptoms and a range of family variab...

Background: Current "gold standard" treatments for social anxiety disorder (SAD) are limited by the limited emphasis of key etiological factors in conceptualization, and many individuals with SAD experience residual symptoms posttreatment. Hence, the novel application of the Schema Therapy Mode Model may provide a helpful framework for extending c...

Cognitive models of social anxiety propose that overestimation of the probability and cost of negative evaluation plays a central role in maintaining the disorder. However, there are currently no self-report state-based measures of probability and cost appraisals. The current paper examines the psychometric properties of the Probability and Consequ...

Objective: Distress tolerance (DT) has been found to be implicated in the development and maintenance of depressive symptomatology and various other significant psychological conditions. As such, it is critical to have measures of DT that are effective and easy to administer. This study aimed to examine the factor structure, psychometric propertie...

Difficulties with emotion regulation have been found to be implicated in the development and maintenance of depression and symptoms of low mood, as well as various other significant psychological conditions including mood disorders, anxiety disorders and personality disorders. Thus, it is important to have valid and reliable measures of difficultie...

Background Increased theoretical and empirical attention has been given to examining the role of core beliefs in both the development and maintenance of eating disorders (EDs). The Eating Disorder Core Beliefs Questionnaire (ED-CBQ) is self-report measure designed to assess five dimensions of core beliefs relating to eating disorders; self-loathing...

Objectives This study sought to establish four aspects of feasibility for a mindful parenting program: demand for the program from parents with concerns regarding their child’s internalizing problems, acceptability of the program to those parents, preliminary efficacy, and the likelihood of successful expansion of the program to the intended popula...

Background The current pilot study aimed to investigate the benefit of imagery rescripting (IR) as an adjunct to Group Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (GCBT) for SAD, given recent research suggesting that IR is beneficial in the treatment of social anxiety disorder (SAD).Methods Fifteen participants with SAD completed eight sessions of GCBT and two a...

Background: Increased theoretical and empirical attention has been given to examining the role of core beliefs in both the development and maintenance of eating disorders (EDs). The Eating Disorder Core Beliefs Questionnaire (ED-CBQ) is self-report measure designed to assess five dimensions of core beliefs relating to eating disorders; self-loathin...

Background Emerging evidence suggests that death anxiety is an important transdiagnostic construct underlying a range of psychological disorders. Terror Management Theory (TMT) is currently the preeminent theoretical framework used to explain the role that death fears play in psychopathology. This study sought to examine the TMT approach to underst...

Objective: Research suggests an association between the fear of death and social anxiety, but the mechanisms through which these constructs are related remain unclear. From a socio-evolutionary perspective, abandonment and rejection are associated with premature death, and appraisals of the importance of social relationships for maintaining surviva...

Cognitive models have consistently recognised pre-event and post-event rumination as maintaining factors in Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD). This study aimed to investigate the psychometric properties of a state-based measure of pre-event and post-event rumination in SAD: The Socially Anxious Rumination Questionnaire (SARQ), which was formerly known...

Comorbid social anxiety and alcohol use disorders (SAD-AUD) in the community and the complex interactions that occur between these disorders have emerged as a significant clinical, public health, and research issue. The authors examined (a) the rates of comorbid SAD-AUD, (b) the impact of comorbid SAD-AUD on outcomes targeting social anxiety disord...

The Self-Beliefs related to Social Anxiety (SBSA) scale assesses maladaptive social-evaluative beliefs, a key aspect in models of social anxiety disorder (SAD) that is frequently measured in research and clinical contexts. The SBSA has been evaluated psychometrically in student samples, but not in a large sample of individuals diagnosed with SAD. T...

Intolerance of uncertainty is a psychological vulnerability implicated in the development and maintenance of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). The Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale-12 (IUS-12) is a widely used measure, however no studies have thoroughly tested the psychometric properties in a clinically diagnosed GAD sample. This study aimed to ev...

Inpatient psychiatric hospitals have remained a standard aspect of mental health treatment for many centuries. While numerous treatments have been empirically validated to assist inpatients, less is known about how inpatients perceive psychiatric hospitals. A meta-review, which is a systematic review of systematic reviews, was conducted to examine...

Different and evolving conceptualisations of perfectionism have led to the development of numerous perfectionism measures in an attempt to capture the true representations of the construct. It is, therefore, important to ensure that these instruments are valid and reliable. The present systematic review examined the literature for the psychometric...

Background and Objectives Family factors, such as family accommodation and parent-child characteristics, are hypothesised as important maintaining factors in paediatric OCD. There is limited research assessing parent and child behaviour amongst young people with OCD during family interactions. Thus, the current study sought to further explore paren...

The current study aimed to investigate the content of negative self-imagery (NSI) in Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) and to explore the relationship between NSI and other maintaining variables. Eighty-six individuals (83.7% female) with SAD completed self-report questionnaires and a semi-structured imagery interview. Thematic analysis was used to ass...

Recent research suggests that the transdiagnostic construct of death anxiety may be a basic fear underlying a range of anxiety disorders. Although the investigation of death anxiety in clinical populations is relatively recent, the death anxiety literature as a whole has a longer history evidenced by the number of instruments developed to measure t...

A significant number of children and adolescents with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) demonstrate poor response to the current gold standard treatment, cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) with exposure and response prevention (ERP). Recent findings suggest that family variables affect treatment response highlighting the need for a meta-analytic r...

Résumé La présente étude s’est intéressée aux réactions affectives, cognitives et comportementales aux attentes élevées répétées en matière de rendement pour l’exécution d’une tâche en fonction du perfectionnisme adaptatif et du perfectionnisme inadapté. Un échantillon de 176 participants devait remplir une série de questionnaires d’auto-évaluation...

The study investigated the affective and cognitive responses (including self-beliefs about personality attributes and the level of certainty associated with these beliefs) to the repeated delivery of performance feedback (failure vs. success) across adaptive and maladaptive dimensions of perfectionism. Participants completed questionnaires and a me...

Objectives Self-compassion is a healthy way of relating to one’s self motivated by a desire to help rather than harm. Novel self-compassion-based interventions have targeted diverse populations and outcomes. This meta-analysis identified randomized controlled trials of self-compassion interventions and measured their effects on psychosocial outcome...

Attentional Control Theory (ACT) (Eysenck & Derakshan, 2011) proposes that attention control (AC) deficits are central to the development of anxiety. This meta-analysis investigated the size and nature of AC deficits in anxious compared to non-anxious participants. We made the following hypotheses based on ACT: i) anxiety-related AC deficits occur...

Background: There are a number of factors commonly believed to be important to the development and maintenance of binge eating that have been identified across multiple models and theories in the psychological literature. In the present study, we sought to develop and test a psychological model for binge eating that incorporated the main variables...

Background: The psychological well-being of parents and children is compromised in families characterized by greater parenting stress. As parental mindfulness is associated with lower parenting stress, a growing number of studies have investigated whether mindfulness interventions can improve outcomes for families. This systematic review and meta-a...

The impostor phenomenon is a pervasive psychological experience of perceived intellectual and professional fraudulence. It is not a diagnosable condition yet observed in clinical and normal populations. Increasingly, impostorism research has expanded beyond clinical and into applied settings. However, to date, a systematic review examining the meth...

We aimed to experimentally assess the role of cognitive processes in provoking anxiety and compulsive behaviours in young people with OCD, and to determine whether specific cognitive appraisal subtypes (e.g., threat) best explain OCD symptoms. 29 young people with a principal diagnosis of OCD, 30 young people with an anxiety disorder other than OCD...

The present study examined the content of self-related beliefs (i.e., the self-concept) and the level of certainty associated with these beliefs (i.e., self-concept certainty) across adaptive and maladaptive dimensions of perfectionism. A sample of 103 university students (26 adaptive perfectionists, 28 maladaptive perfectionists, and 49 non-perfec...

Background The Eating Beliefs Questionnaire (EBQ) is a self-report assessment tool that measures positive and negative beliefs about food and eating that are believed to play a key role in maintaining binge eating behaviour that occurs in individuals with Bulimia Nervosa, Binge Eating Disorder and other atypical eating disorders. The present study...

The Eating Beliefs Questionnaire (EBQ) is a valid and reliable self-report tool measuring positive and negative beliefs about binge eating. This study sought to further investigate the clinical utility of the EBQ using a clinical binge eating sample and a healthy control comparison group. Clinical participants were 74 individuals seeking treatment...

Binge eating is a core diagnostic feature of bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder, anorexia nervosa binge/purge type, and is a common feature of “other specified” and “unspecified” feeding and eating disorders. It has been suggested that specific metacognitive beliefs about food, eating, and binge eating may play a key role in the maintenance of...

Pre- and post-event rumination have been proposed to be key processes involved in the maintenance of social anxiety disorder. While the importance of addressing rumination in treatment is becoming increasingly clear, factors that mediate the relationship between changes in social anxiety and changes in rumination have yet to be investigated. Indivi...

Background and objectives: Pre-event rumination has a clear role in maintaining social anxiety according to cognitive models. However, it is unclear what specific strategies can address pre-event rumination for individuals diagnosed with SAD. The current study aimed to determine the effectiveness of a brief intervention on multiple aspects of pre-...

Negative rumination in social anxiety disorder (SAD) occurs in anticipation of a social event (pre-event rumination) and in its aftermath (post-event rumination). Both are proposed to be key maintaining factors of the vicious cycle of social anxiety. Despite this, there is a dearth of research investigating the processes that mediate the relationsh...

Binge eating is a distressing symptom common to bulimia nervosa (BN), anorexia nervosa binge/purge subtype (AN-BP) and binge-eating disorder (BED). Over the last 40 years, many attempts have been made to conceptualise this symptom in terms of its antecedents, function, triggers, consequences, and maintaining factors. Cognitive theories of binge eat...

Background The Eating Beliefs Questionnaire (EBQ) is a 27-item self-report measure that assesses positive and negative beliefs about binge eating. It has been validated and its factor structure explored in a non-clinical sample. This study tested the psychometric properties of the EBQ in a clinical and a non-clinical sample. Method A sample of 769...

Objective: Self-focused processing is a significant maintaining factor in cognitive models of social anxiety disorder (SAD), but it may also be analytic (detached, evaluative, maladaptive) or experiential (concrete, nonevaluative, adaptive). The current study aimed to investigate the effect of self-focus modes in a sample meeting criteria for SAD...

Despite the emphasis on threat appraisal in cognitive models of anxiety, self-report measures of related processes in children and adolescents have been lacking. This paper reports on the development and preliminary psychometric evaluation of a new measure of threat appraisal for children and adolescents – the Threat Appraisal Questionnaire for Chi...

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is characterised by a marked and persistent fear of social/performance situations, and a number of key environmental factors have been implicated in the aetiology of the disorder. Hence, the current article reviews theoretical and empirical evidence linking the development of SAD with parenting factors, traumatic life...

The appraisal model of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) suggests that six key appraisal domains contribute to the aetiology and maintenance of OCD symptoms. An accumulating body of evidence supports this notion and suggests that modifying cognitive appraisals may be beneficial in reducing obsessive-compulsive symptomatology. This literature revi...

Anticipatory processing, maladaptive attentional focus, and post-event processing are key cognitive constructs implicated in the maintenance of social anxiety disorder (SAD). The current study examined how treatment for SAD concurrently affects these three cognitive maintaining processes and how these processes are associated with each other as wel...

Background Cognitive models of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) suggest that responsibility appraisals contribute to the aetiology and maintenance of OCD symptoms. An accumulating body of evidence supports this notion, and preliminary data indicates that modifying responsibility appraisals in treatment can be beneficial in reducing obsessive-com...

Cognitive factors, including beliefs, thoughts and assumptions have been found to play an important role in the development and maintenance of Social Anxiety Disorder. Trait cognitive self-report measures of social anxiety are widely used in research and clinical settings. It is imperative that only measures with good psychometric properties are us...

Background and objectives: According to cognitive models of Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD), negative rumination is a key maintaining factor in the vicious cycle of social anxiety. However, there is a scarcity of research investigating treatment effects on rumination in social anxiety, as well as other key cognitive variables. The current study aime...

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is characterised by an intense fear of social situations in which the individual believes they may be negatively evaluated (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). A number of cognitive models (Clark & Wells, 1995; Hofmann, 2007; Rapee & Heimberg, 1997) have been proposed that provide frameworks for understanding the...

Background: A number of key environmental factors during childhood have been implicated in the aetiology of social anxiety disorder (SAD), including aversive social experiences, traumatic life events and parent-child interaction. However, understanding the nature, interactions and relative contributions of these factors remains unclear. Furthermor...

Background: Prominent cognitive models of social anxiety have consistently emphasised the importance of beliefs about the self in the aetiology and maintenance of social anxiety. The present study sought to develop and validate a new measure of core beliefs about the self for SAD, the Core Beliefs Questionnaire (CBQ). Methods: Three versions of...

Cognitive models of social anxiety disorder suggest that negative self-images maintain social fears despite repeated exposure to benign social situations. An accumulating body of evidence supports this notion, and preliminary data indicates that modifying self-imagery can potentially reduce fears of negative evaluation in socially anxious individua...

Background: Individuals with anxiety disorders display reduced resting-state heart rate variability (HRV), although findings have been contradictory and the role of specific symptoms has been less clear. It is possible that HRV reductions may transcend diagnostic categories, consistent with dimensional-trait models of psychopathology. Here we inves...

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is characterised by a marked and persistent fear of social or performance situations. Cognitive models suggest that self-focused cognitive processes play a crucial role in generating and maintaining social anxiety, and that self-focused cognition occurs prior to, during, and following social situations (Clark & Wells,...

The Eating Beliefs Questionnaire (EBQ; Groves, Abbott & Baillie, 2015) is a 32-item self-report questionnaire assessing positive and negative beliefs about binge-eating, which are implicated in the maintenance of binge-eating in keeping with Cooper et al.'s (2004) cognitive model. The EBQ was shown to be a valid and reliable measure of eating-relat...

Using a systematic search strategy in which intellectual giftedness was operationalized in terms of IQ score, the authors examined evidence from studies reporting on associations between this aspect of giftedness and psychopathology. A total of 18 studies met the inclusion criteria: compared gifted (IQ ≥ 125) and nongifted (IQ = 90–110) peers or us...

Binge eating is a symptom common to bulimia nervosa, anorexia nervosa (binge/purge subtype), and binge eating disorder. There are many self-report measures available to aid the assessment of eating disorders symptoms, but there has not yet been a systematic review of the literature to identify the most valid and reliable measures for use in assessm...

The present study examined the reciprocal relationships between probability estimates, cost estimates, and social anxiety during a 12-week course of cognitive-behaviour therapy (CBT) for social anxiety disorder (SAD). One hundred and sixty-three individuals with a principal diagnosis of SAD completed a weekly tracking measure that included question...

Since the inclusion of social anxiety disorder in DSM-III, a number of self-report measures have been developed in order to detect and measure aspects of trait social anxiety. The present systematic review examined evidence supporting the psychometric properties of trait social anxiety self-report measures. Relevant studies were identified via a co...

Background Cognitive models of Social Anxiety Disorder suggest that negative self-images maintain social fears despite repeated exposure to benign social situations. An accumulating body of evidence supports this notion, and preliminary data indicate that modifying self-imagery can potentially reduce fears of negative evaluation in socially anxious...

ContextThe cultivation of mindfulness and acceptance has been theoretically and empirically associated with psychological ancillary well-being and has demonstrated efficacy in the treatment of various disorders. Hence, mindfulness and acceptance-based treatments (MABTs) have recently been explored for the treatment of social anxiety disorder (SAD)....

"I feel fat" is a statement women, and increasingly men, often make. Clinical observations indicate that these feelings of fat are experienced more intensely and frequently in those who suffer from eating disorders. However, physical fat is not an emotion that one can "feel". According to body displacement theory, the propensity to mislabel fat as...

Social Phobia (SP) is a psychological disorder characterised by an excessive and persistent fear of negative evaluation in social or performance situations that interferes with daily functioning. Cognitive models of SP (Clark & Wells, 1995; Hofmann, 2007; Rapee & Heimberg, 1997) emphasise the role of negative images of the self as an important fact...

Cognitive processes are considered integral to the conceptualisation of emotional disorders and distress. Contemporary models have emphasised the importance of individual differences in the interpretation of internal events, including emotions. Maladaptive beliefs about emotional experience may motivate unhelpful control strategies, and impact nega...

Background: Anxiety disorders increase risk of future cardiovascular disease (CVD) and mortality, even after controlling for confounds including smoking, lifestyle, and socioeconomic status, and irrespective of a history of medical disorders. While impaired vagal function, indicated by reductions in heart rate variability (HRV), may be one mechanis...

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is a psychological disorder characterised by an excessive and persistent fear of social or performance situations, which interferes with daily functioning. Cognitive models of SAD (Clark & Wells, 1995; Hofmann, 2007; Rapee & Heimberg, 1997) emphasise the importance of negative pre- and post-event rumination as a mainta...

Cognitive models emphasise the importance of pre- and post-event rumination as maintaining factors of Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD), however, there is limited research investigating pre-event rumination. This study aims to examine several key hypotheses posited by the cognitive models by experimentally manipulating social standards in order to exam...

The present study investigated the role of standard setting by examining the differences in cognitive, affective, and behavioural responses to completing a task for adaptive and maladaptive perfectionists, and the impact of manipulating the expected standards of a task on the evaluation of performance standards. Groups of adaptive, maladaptive, and...

Mindfulness meditation has beneficial effects on brain and body, yet the impact of Vipassana, a type of mindfulness meditation, on heart rate variability (HRV) - a psychophysiological marker of mental and physical health - is unknown. We hypothesised increases in measures of well-being and HRV, and decreases in ill-being after training in Vipassana...