Jovic,
Sofija (04/08) The role of intolerance of uncertainty in etiology and
maintenance of anxious response to trauma (David Castro Blanco, Ph.D.; Gary
Kose, Ph.D.; Joan Duncan, Ph.D.)
Research has established anxiety as a
component of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). However, there is little
research that examines intolerance of uncertainty as a cognitive vulnerability
that mediates the relationship between anxiety and trauma. The present study
proposed a mediation model in which intolerance of uncertainty would accentuate
threat bias in participants with a trauma history and increase the likelihood
that these participants would also show elevations on measurements of anxiety
pathology. The sample consisted of a racially-diverse 149 undergraduate
psychology students who tested in the clinical ranges of distress on key study
measures of trauma and anxiety. They were exposed to an experimental situation
designed to accentuate threat bias and differentiate the level of threat bias
according to levels of intolerance of uncertainty. The mediation model proposed
was supported with some limitations. It was found that intolerance of
uncertainty mediated the relationship between trauma and dispositional anxiety
(anxiety sensitivity and affective control). However, this was only true for
neutrally-valenced stimuli. Participants showed no significant threat bias in
threatening stimuli. In the case of positive stimuli, those participants who
showed elevations on trauma and anxiety measures, showed evidence of emotional
numbing, i.e. misappraising the positive as neutral stimuli. These findings
bear on the debate between attentional perseveration and attentional
facilitation as two mechanism underlying threat bias, as well as shedding light
on the phenomenon of emotional numbing can accompany a trauma history.
Implications and future research directions are also discussed.
