Margo C. Watt –SRG 2006
Français
This research project has three main objectives. The first objective is to investigate the relationship between anxiety sensitivity (AS) and physical activity in a sample of young adults. Anxiety sensitivity (AS) is a dispositional variable referring to the fear of anxiety-related bodily sensations arising from beliefs that these sensations have harmful physical, psychological, and/or social consequences. High AS has been implicated in the development of psychopathology (e.g., anxiety and related disorders) but also has been implicated as a risk factor for physical pathology (low levels of physical activity). It has been suggested that, because exercise produces physiological sensations similar to those feared by individuals with high AS (e.g., elevated heart rate), it tends to be avoided. An alternative explanation is that a lack of exposure to these sensations resulting from physical inactivity promotes increased AS.
The second objective of this research project is to investigate childhood learning experiences related to the development of both AS levels and physical activity habits. My early work demonstrated links between retrospectively-reported childhood learning experiences and elevated AS in young adulthood, and found AS to mediate relations between childhood learning experiences and elevated health-related concerns in young adulthood. Although some attempts have been made to identify factors that may influence physical activity habits, knowledge in this area remains rudimentary. Research has found some evidence for the influence of social learning factors (e.g., parental reinforcement and parental modeling) on children’s health-related activities. Collection of parental validation data will allow for corroboration of students’ retrospective accounting. The third objective of the present research is to investigate the process through which a brief cognitive behavioural intervention that includes physical exercise as the interoceptive exposure component decreases anxiety sensitivity (AS) in a non-clinical population. A brief cognitive behavioral treatment (CBT) that includes an interoceptive exposure (IE) component (i.e., running) has been found to be effective in decreasing fear of anxiety-related sensations in high anxiety sensitive (AS) women (see Watt, Stewart, Birch, & Bernier, 2006). The current research project included a process-based study which examined the specific role of the IE component in explaining intervention efficacy. This study found that the affective and cognitive reactions, and objective physiological reactivity, to the running were initially higher in high (vs. low) AS participants and decreased over IE trials in high (vs. low) AS participants. In contrast, self-reported somatic reactions, which were initially greater in the high AS participants, decreased comparably in both AS groups over IE trials. Findings were consistent with the theorized cognitive and/or habituation pathways to decreased AS.
Contact Us
