Anxiety, Worry, and Difficulty Concentrating: A Longitudinal Examination of Concurrent and Prospective Symptom Relationships.

Difficulty concentrating is an understudied cognitive phenomenon, despite its status as a diagnostic criterion for generalized anxiety disorder and contributor to clinically significant distress and impairment. Worry may constitute a cognitive mechanism by which anxiety leads to difficulty concentrating. The present study examined concurrent and prospective associations between self-reported anxiety, worry, and subjective difficulty concentrating across three timepoints (T1 April/May, T2 July/August, T3 October/November 2020) in 198 adults (M age = 37.

Direct mapping of intervention to thought features: A Bayesian proof-of-concept study.

Although uncontrollability is the core feature of perseverative thought that best accounts for its relationship to psychopathology, other features - for example, valence and content - have also been identified as potentially clinically relevant in their own right. We describe results from a proof-of-concept study that examined the extent to which major underlying features of worry could be used to predict which of three common cognitive regulatory strategies (mindful acceptance; focused attention meditation; and thought suppression) would help regulate that worry. N = 40 adults selected for high trait worry (80% also met criteria for one or more DSM-5 anxiety-related diagnoses) generated and provided feature ratings for three idiographic thought topics.

A temporal investigation of the relationship between difficulty concentrating and perseverative thought.

Perseverative thought (also known as repetitive thought) is an established transdiagnostic mechanism of internalizing psychopathology characterized primarily by its repetitive, difficult to control quality. Subjective difficulty concentrating frequently coincides with perseverative thought and may function as both mechanism and clinical consequence of perseverative thought. Although cognitive theories suggest a bidirectional relationship between perseverative thought and difficulty concentrating, experimental and longitudinal investigations provide mixed evidence.

Intolerance of uncertainty as a predictor of anxiety severity and trajectory during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background: Efforts to identify risk and resilience factors for anxiety severity and course during the COVID-19 pandemic have focused primarily on demographic rather than psychological variables. Intolerance of uncertainty (IU), a transdiagnostic risk factor for anxiety, may be a particularly relevant vulnerability factor.

Method: N = 641 adults with pre-pandemic anxiety data reported their anxiety, IU, and other pandemic and mental health-related variables at least once and up to four times during the COVID-19 pandemic, with assessments beginning in May 2020 through March 2021.

Impaired disengagement from worry: Dissociating the impacts of valence and internally-directed attention.

Worry is a repetitive, negative thought process that is widely experienced as difficult to control. Despite the adverse effects of uncontrollable worry on academic and other role functioning, the mechanisms by which worry becomes uncontrollable remain poorly understood. Previous experimental work has historically emphasized valence (negative versus positive or neutral).

Worry alters speed-accuracy tradeoffs but does not impair sustained attention.

Worry has been experimentally linked to a range of cognitive consequences, including impairments in working memory, inhibition, and cognitive control. However, findings are mixed, and the effects of worry on other phenomenologically-relevant constructs, such as sustained attention, have received less attention. Potential confounds such as speed-accuracy tradeoffs have also received little attention, as have psychometric and related design considerations, and potential moderators beyond trait worry.

"Cold" Cognitive Control and Attentional Symptoms in Anxiety: Perceptions Versus Performance.

Clinically significant anxiety is associated with an array of attentional symptoms (e.g., difficulty concentrating; unwanted thought) that are subjectively experienced as severe.

Enhanced cognitive control over task-irrelevant emotional distractors in generalized anxiety disorder versus obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is defined in part by excessive and uncontrollable worry. However, little is known about cognitive control abilities in adults with GAD. The present study examined cognitive control over negative and neutral material in a mixed clinical sample of adults with GAD and/or obsessive-compulsive disorder and a comparison healthy control sample.

Difficulty concentrating in generalized anxiety disorder: An evaluation of incremental utility and relationship to worry.

Difficulty concentrating is one of the most common diagnostic criteria across DSM-5 categories, especially within the emotional (mood- and anxiety-related) disorders. A substantial literature has characterized cognitive functioning in emotional disorders using objective (behavioral) computerized cognitive tasks. However, diagnoses are typically formed on the basis of subjective (self-reported; clinician-rated) assessments of symptoms, and little is known about difficulty concentrating as a symptom.