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My research interests are centered on understanding
and predicting vulnerabilities to emotional disorders and other
cognitive-clinical phenomena. I have an active research laboratory in the
department of psychology (i.e., the Risk and Prevention Program)
that involves both graduate students in the clinical psychology program
and undergraduate psychology majors. This program of research is aimed at
examining several empirical questions including: (a) What makes one
vulnerable to anxiety or mood disorders?; (b) How do these vulnerability
factors operate to maintain and exacerbate symptoms once disorders
manifest?; and (c) How can vulnerabilities be most effectively reduced in
“at risk” individuals?
Drawing on
cognitive behavioral theories of emotional disorders and past
coping/defensive functioning research and theory, I conceptualize my
research interests in terms of two interactive domains: cognitive
vulnerabilities and coping/compensatory strategies. Cognitive
vulnerabilities and coping can be investigated at the level of general
vulnerability factors (i.e., those that set conditions for myriad
emotional disorders, physical health problems, and interpersonal
difficulties) and specific vulnerability factors (i.e., those that are
disorder-specific). Moreover, these domains can be investigated as
independent vulnerabilities and as interactional vulnerabilities (e.g.,
diathesis-stress models of anxiety and depression). Finally, these
domains can be investigated in terms of structure (e.g., the unique
cognitive phenomenology of anxiety and/or information processing biases
that confer cognitive vulnerability) and in terms of process (e.g.,
cognitive flexibility, coping flexibility, and the interactions between
cognitive vulnerabilities, coping, and environmental factors). Emerging
interests include applying developmental life-span perspectives to
diathesis-stress models of anxiety and mood disorders (particularly in
older adults) and examining the impact that of vulnerability factors on
medical compliance in specific medical populations (e.g., breast cancer,
diabetes, heart disease).
Cognitive
Vulnerabilities:
Much of the
research that I have conducted over the past five years has focused on
cognitive vulnerabilities to depression and anxiety. I have conducted and
published numerous studies that examine cognitive vulnerability to
anxiety, schematic-processing biases associated with anxiety, the unique cognitive
phenomenology and content of anxiety, and information-processing biases
associated with cognitive
vulnerability to anxiety. Dr. John Riskind and I have conceptualized
cognitive vulnerability to anxiety in terms of the looming maladaptive
style, a cognitive style that functions as a danger schema to produce the
typical phenomenology of intensifying danger and rapidly rising risk seen
in pathological anxiety.
While the looming
maladaptive style appears to constitute a general cognitive vulnerability
for all types of anxiety and its disorders, I have also conducted
numerous studies on cognitive vulnerabilities to specific anxiety
disorders and a range of cognitive-clinical phenomena (e.g., thought
suppression, worry, attachment styles, physical/somatic health, and
school violence). For example, I have examined the role of catastrophic
cognitions in panic disorder and GAD, the adaptive and maladaptive
functions of thought suppression in OCD, the relationship between
cognitive vulnerability to anxiety and adult attachment styles, the
effects of cognitive vulnerability to anxiety on physical and somatic
health, and the differentiation of worry and rumination in GAD. I remain
quite interested in continuing to conduct research investigating
cognitive vulnerabilities to anxiety and depression, using both
cognitive-experimental and longitudinal research designs.
Coping:
While the
importance of cognitive styles as psychological antecedents of emotional
disorders has gained increasing acceptance over the past 2 decades,
little research has explored the potential significance that coping
styles or coping flexibility may hold for conferring vulnerability to
these disorders. Over the past four years, I have developed the Cognitive
Interactional Model of Appraisal and Coping to emphasize the role of
cognitive styles and schemas in providing a dispositional basis for
coping. This model represents a synthesis of past coping research and
theory, cognitive-clinical research and theory on emotional disorders,
and more recent cognitive vulnerability research. Further, this model is
based on four key assumptions: (1) individuals with vulnerability to
emotional disorders have relatively consistent patterns of cognitive
appraisal that are disorder-specific and that are reflected in their
cognitive schemas and styles; (2) these patterns of cognitive appraisal
provi de a dispositional basis for coping (i.e., coping styles); (3)
individual differences in cognitive schemata or cognitive styles for
individuals with cognitive vulnerability to emotional disorders
correspond to differences in coping styles; and, (4) coping styles vary
in their flexibility as a function of the flexibility of the cognitive
schemas and cognitive styles for individuals with vulnerability to
emotional disorders. Thus, in conceptualizing vulnerabilities I examine
both one’s dispositional style of perceiving environmental stimuli (e.g.,
cognitive vulnerabilities) and one’s dispositional style of responding to
or coping with one’s perceptions (e.g., coping styles).
School Violence:
In recent years I
have extended my examination of cognitive vulnerabilities and coping
styles to the study of school violence. I am particularly interested in
teacher factors that influence the incidence of disruptive, aggressive,
and violent behavior in the classroom, as well as interventions that are
designed to increase teachers’ proficiency at reducing such behavior.
Thus far, my research in this area has focused on the relationships
between teacher efficacy for classroom management (e.g., beliefs about
one’s ability to cope with and respond to disruptive, aggressive, and
violent behavior), teacher perceptions of risk, and the actual incidence
of disruptive behaviors in the classroom. I have presented numerous
intervention based workshops at the Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania
and was an invited speaker at the Pennsylvania Governor’s Summit on
School Safety. I am currently involved in a collaborative effort with
faculty in the College of Education to conduct several interven tion
based studies of the impact of teacher efficacy on the incidence of
disruptive classroom behavior with both pre-service teachers at the
University of Arkansas and Arkansas elementary schools.
Representative
Publications:
Riskind, J. H.,
& Williams, N. L. (Submitted). Complimentarity of different forms of
looming vulnerability to checking and contamination subtypes of OCD.
Williams,
N. L., Shahar, G., Riskind, J. H., & Joiner, T. E. (2005). The
Looming Cognitive Style Has a General Effect on an Anxiety Disorder
Symptoms Factor: Further Support for a Cognitive Model of Vulnerability
to Anxiety. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 19, 157 - 175.
Riskind, J. H.,
& Williams, N. L. (in press). Cognitive vulnerability to generalized
anxiety: Implications of the looming vulnerability model. Journal of
Cognitive Psychotherapy.
Riskind, J. H., & Williams, N. L. (2005). A unique vulnerability
common to all anxiety disorders: The looming maladaptive style (pp. 175 -
206). In L. B. Alloy & J. H. Riskind (Eds.), Cognitive
vulnerability to emotional disorders. New York, Earlbaum.
Riskind, J. H., Williams, N. L., & Kyrios (2002). Experimental
Methods for Studying Cognition. In R. O. Frost and G. Steketee (Eds.), Cognitive
Approaches to obsessions and compulsions: Theory, assessment, and
treatment (pp. 139-164). Amsterdam, Netherlands: Pergamon/Elsevier
Science.
Williams, N. L.
& Riskind, J. H. (In Press). Cognitive vulnerability to anxiety and
attachment in adult romantic relationship. Journal of Cognitive
Psychotherapy.
Feldman Barrett, L.
A., Williams, N. L., & Fong, G. T. (2002). Defensive verbal behavior
assessment. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 776 –
788.
Williams, N. L.
(2002). The cognitive interactional model of appraisal and coping:
Implications for anxiety and depression. Dissertation. George Mason University, Fairfax, VA.
Riskind, J. H.,
Long, D. G., Williams, N. L., & White, J. C. (2000). Desperate acts
for desperate times: Looming vulnerability and suicide. In T. Joiner
(Ed.), Suicide Science. New York: Plenum Press.
Riskind, J. H.,
Williams, N. L., Gessner, T., Chrosniak, L, & Cortina, J. (2000). A Pattern
of Mental Organization and Danger Schema Related to Anxiety: The Looming
Maladaptive Style. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79,
837-852.
Riskind, J. H.,
& Williams, N. L. (1999). Specific cognitive content of anxiety and
catastrophizing: Looming vulnerability and the looming maladaptive style.
Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy, 13, 41-54.
Riskind, J. H.,
& Williams, N. L. (1999). Cognitive Case Conceptualization and
Treatment of Anxiety Disorders: Implication of the Looming vulnerability
Model. Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy, 13, 295-316.
Useful Links:
Personal
webpage
Lab webpage
Publications &
presentations
Work
in progress
Teaching
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