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Biomedical subjects

J H Riskind

Publications and source records attributed to J H Riskind.

18 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2001

Obsessive-compulsive features in pathological lottery and scratch-ticket gamblers.

The results of this study support the notion that pathological gamblers drawn from the community would score higher on all three scores from the YBOCS than light gamblers. Consistent with hypotheses, pathological gamblers (lottery and scratch ticket) reported more obsessions, compulsions, and avoidance behavior than the light gamblers, and also reported having more urges to engage in injurious behaviors to themselves and others. These findings provide evidence that pathological gambling falls in a spectrum or family of disorders which have obsessive-compulsive disorder at its core. These findings support McElroy, Hudson, Philips, et al.'s (1993) suggestions of similarities between OCD and Impulse Control Disorders, and extend Blaszczynski (1999) findings of overlap between pathological gamblers and OCD in a treatment population. Heavy gamblers also reported significantly more hoarding symptoms and compulsive buying than light gamblers. More research in this area may show further evidence of a spectrum of disorders with obsessive compulsive disorder at its core, and show further links between impulse control disorders (such as pathological gambling) and OCD.

Adult↗
PubMed2000

The looming maladaptive style: anxiety, danger, and schematic processing.

The importance of cognitive styles as psychological antecedents of psychopathology has gained increasing acceptance over the past 2 decades. Although ample research has explored cognitive styles that confer vulnerability to depression, cognitive styles that confer vulnerability to anxiety have received considerably less attention. In the present investigation, we examined the looming maladaptive style (LMS) as a cognitive style that functions as a danger schema to produce specific vulnerability to anxiety, but not to depression. In 4 studies, we examined the psychometric properties of a revised measure of the LMS, its predictive utility, and its effects on threat-related schematic processing. Results provided evidence for the validity of the LMS and indicated that it predicts anxiety and schematic processing of threat over and above the effects of other cognitive appraisals of threat, even in individuals who are currently nonanxious.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1997

Looming vulnerability to spreading contamination in subclinical OCD.

The present study examined the hypothesis, stimulated by the looming vulnerability model of anxiety (Riskind, in press, Behaviour Research and Therapy), that subclinical OCD is associated with a subjective sense of looming vulnerability. One-hundred and four undergraduates rated vignettes of common, everyday situations involving exposure to possible dirt, germs, or contamination. Participants in a subclinical obsessional group had a far higher sense of looming vulnerability to spreading contamination than did those in a control group. Results verified that the subjective sense of looming vulnerability still had separate, distinct and significant contributions to fear-of-contamination symptoms, with the effects of cognitive appraisals of other aspects of threat (such as probability of harm, or lack of control) removed. In contrast, these other cognitive appraisals had no significant associations with symptoms that proved to be independent of the subjective sense of looming vulnerability. A path analysis further explored the dependency of these other cognitive appraisals on looming vulnerability. This analysis found that part of the effects of the subjective sense of looming vulnerability on fears may be indirect and mediated via correlated effects of other cognitive appraisals.

Adult↗
PubMed1997

Looming vulnerability to threat: a cognitive paradigm for anxiety.

The concept that perceived threat or danger is a cognitive antecedent of anxiety is central in clinical psychology, personality psychology, and social psychology. The aim in the current article is to review this concept and present a new conception called the looming vulnerability model. Looming vulnerability is conceptualized as an important cognitive component of threat or danger that elicits anxiety, sensitizes the individual to signs of movement and threat, biases cognitive processing, and makes the anxiety more persistent and less likely to habituate. In addition, it is postulated as a principal theme that discriminates anxiety and focal fears from depression. The looming vulnerability model integrates a disparate collection of findings and integrates the conceptualization of anxiety and fear with ethological and developmental observations. The social-cognitive and evolutionary basis of the sense of looming vulnerability are discussed, as well as its roots in cognitive schemata (fear scripts), its state elicitation by several potential classes of antecedent conditions, and possible treatment implications.

Anxiety↗
PubMed1997

Using mental imagery with subclinical OCD to 'freeze' contamination in its place: evidence for looming vulnerability theory.

The present research examines the possibility that 'freezing' or slowing-down the rate at which threats can advance and thereby blocking a sense of looming vulnerability can reduce fears of contamination and avoidance behavior among individuals with obsessional symptoms. Mental imagery was used to reduce the rate at which threat can advance by means of instructions to imagine that contamination was 'frozen' in place and unable to move. Measures included self-reports of anxiety and worry, and indirect assessments of fear and avoidance behavior. A parallel mental imagery condition was used to examine the possibility that accentuating the spread or contamination, or its 'looming', would in turn accentuate fear and avoidance. The results, particularly of the more unobtrusive measures, indicated that freeze imagery reduced fear and avoidance for the relatively obsessional participants. In addition, support was found that it reduced fear for participants with relatively higher levels of imagination. However, the freeze imagery paradoxically seemed to sensitize the non-obsessional participants to possibilities of contamination they had not previously considered, and thus increased their fear. The results provide support for the looming vulnerability model of anxiety and suggest applications to treatment.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1995

The looming of spiders: the fearful perceptual distortion of movement and menace.

The current study examined the relation between the perception that fear-stimuli are looming and fearful cognitive distortions. As hypothesized, high-fear-of-spider Ss were significantly more likely than low-fear Ss to imagine that a spider in a room would move rapidly and selectively to them in proximity, rather than towards three other individuals in the same physical space. This finding was observed with a measure of perceptual-cognitive distortion as well as with self-reports. High-fear Ss were also more likely to perceive spiders as angry and belligerent, as intending to move towards them, and as singling them out from other people. These results suggest that perceptions of looming danger and fearful cognitive distortions are closely linked phenomena. Finally, the perception that spiders are looming and the other cognitive variables could be used to successfully classify the fear-group memberships of the Ss in 98% of the cases. Perceptions that spiders are looming made the single largest unique contribution to the discriminant classification function.

Adult↗
PubMed1987

Reliability of DSM-III diagnoses for major depression and generalized anxiety disorder using the structured clinical interview for DSM-III.

This study examined the interrater reliability of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and major depressive disorder (MDD) diagnoses derived from the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-III (SCID). Using videotaped interviews, paired raters made independent diagnoses of 75 psychiatric outpatients. The percent agreement of the raters was 82% for MDD and 86% for GAD; the respective kappa values were .72 and .79. The results indicated that the SCID can be employed reliably to differentiate MDD from GAD. The SCID is recommended for further research with these disorders.

Adult↗
PubMed1987

Emotional states and memory biases: effects of cognitive priming and mood.

Recent studies have shown that naturally occurring and experimentally induced affect states enhance the accessibility to retrieval of memories of life experiences that are congruent in valence with the affect state. Previous studies have suggested that this memory bias results from the influence of affective processes on memory retrieval. In our study we manipulated mood state by having subjects read statements expressing positive or negative self-evaluative ideas or describing somatic states that often accompany positive or negative mood states. The somatic and self-evaluative statements had, in general, equally strong effects on mood state. In spite of this, however, the self-evaluative statements had a stronger impact on recall latencies for life experiences than did the somatic statements. Moreover, the impact of the self-evaluative, but not the somatic, statements on recall was found to be independent of the statements' effects on mood state. This suggests that the cognitions accompanying a mood-altering experience may have a substantial effect on the capacity of the mood state to influence memory retrieval.

Cognition↗
PubMed1987

Attributions and expectations: a confluence of vulnerabilities in mild depression in a college student population.

The reformulated model of learned helplessness assumes that attributional style has its impact on depression in part through the intermediary effect of pessimistic or negative expectations about the occurrence of future outcomes. A possible logical next step in testing the model is to measure jointly attributions and expectations and to examine their combined (interactive) contributions. We used a short-term longitudinal design to examine whether attributional style works in combination with other factors, such as expectations, to predispose individuals to depression. Consistent with the initial theoretical analysis, the interaction of attributional style and expectations predicted depression on the Beck Depression Inventory 6 weeks later. We also found that attributional style predicted depression 6 weeks later in interaction with initial level of depression. These findings support our confluence hypothesis, which assumes that vulnerability factors can combine interactively and qualify the effects of attributional style. These interaction-effect findings have implications for currently popular cognitive theories of depression and for previous research on vulnerability to depression that has examined only the effects of single cognitive variables (such as attributional style) considered alone. Further study is also necessary to determine the nature of the overlap of the effects of expectation and initial level of depression.

Adult↗
PubMed1987

Taking the measure of anxiety and depression. Validity of the reconstructed Hamilton scales.

The ability of the Hamilton Psychiatric Rating Scale for Depression (HRSD) and the Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale (HARS) to discriminate major depressive disorder (MDD) from generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) was studied in 120 psychiatric outpatients and cross-validated with another 71 outpatients. Factor and discriminant analyses were used to develop revised anxiety and depression scales that were less positively correlated with each other, showed greater internal consistency, and differentiated MDD and GAD better than the original scales. The recombined scales also displayed higher rates of correctly assigning the samples to these disorders than did the original scales.

Adult↗
PubMed1986

Differentiation of depressive disorders from generalized anxiety by the Beck Depression Inventory.

The Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) was administered to 35 outpatients diagnosed according to the DSM-III as primary generalized anxiety disorders and 101 outpatients diagnosed as primary major-depression and dysthymic disorders. A backward stepwise-discriminant analysis revealed that Sadness and Loss of Libido were the only two symptoms that meaningfully distinguished between the two groups. The depressed patients were sadder and complained of more loss of libido than did the anxious patients. It was concluded that the BDI is a powerful tool for differentiating the depressive from generalized anxiety disorders.

Adult↗
PubMed1978

Locus of control and degree of compliance in hemodialysis patients.

An experiment was conducted to test the hypothesis that dialysis patients with an internal locus of control orientation will show a higher rate of compliance to medication and dietary restrictions than those patients with an external locus of control. The results strongly supported the hypothesis. The possibility of interventions to modify patient locus of control is discussed, as is the use of this widely studied personality variable in predicting patient compliance.

Adult↗