Carl Weems - US grants

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Childhood anxiety disorders are arguably the most prevalent emotional disorders of childhood and can negatively impact children's school and interpersonal functioning (Keller et al., 1992; Silverman & Ginsburg, 1998). The proposed research is targeted at a critical gap in understanding the cognitive developmental origins of anxiety disorders. That is, the research is aimed at investigating the role of children's reasoning about anxiety sensations. Anxiety sensitivity refers to beliefs that anxiety related sensations (such as feeling shaky, increased heart rate, trembling, shortness of breath) have severe negative social, psychological, or physical consequences. A growing body of evidence implicates anxiety sensitivity as a risk factor for panic as well as other anxiety disorders in adult and adolescent samples (e.g., Hayward, Killen, Kraemer & Taylor, 2000; Mailer & Reiss, 1992; Schmidt, Lerew, & Jackson, 1997; Schmidt, Lerew, and Jackson, 1999). Given the accumulating evidence for a role of anxiety sensitivity in the etiology of panic it is important to better understand the developmental phenomenology of anxiety sensitivity because the utility of existing assessments has been questioned in children under age 12. A clearer understanding of the reasoning that children use in interpreting anxiety sensations and the changes that occur developmentally in that reasoning can help maximize the utility of assessing anxiety sensitivity and facilitate the use of anxiety sensitivity theory for understanding childhood anxiety disorders. The first specific aim of the proposed research is the development of an instrument that will assess children's reasoning about anxiety sensations. The second aim is the identification of the types of reasons that children use to evaluate anxiety symptoms (e.g., does their reasoning involve attributing severe negative social, psychological, or physical consequences to anxiety, sensations as adults do). The third and final aim is to explore possible developmental differences in children's reasoning about anxiety sensations.

Increasingly, there is a need for better understanding of behavioral and cognitive factors in cyber security. This project is a novel collaboration between computer science cyber security researchers and a cognitive science researcher to generate data on the links between personality traits and cyber security. The broad theoretical premise of the proposed research is that there are particular cognitive preferences and related personality factors that can be assessed in real time, real world scenarios and these may be associated with individual user's secure/insecure cyber behavior. The personality characteristics of trait anxiety and callous unemotional traits are tested via innovative software architecture for immersing subjects in realistic cyber scenarios, to examine the links between response latencies for certain stimuli, personality factors, and cyber behaviors. By studying the links between personality traits and cyber behaviors, it may be possible to develop adaptive software systems, such as user interfaces, alerting systems, and security monitors that tap individual stimuli preferences to substantially reduce the risks or effects of cyber-attacks. The data from the study will inform future work in adaptive cyber security mechanisms, better tailored to individual user traits. The research potentially impacts all sectors of society, since individual citizens, as well as the law enforcement, military, and corporate communities all benefit from research efforts that could facilitate development of better cyber security methods. Furthermore, the psychology and cyber security research communities will benefit from the results of this project and the developed software architecture.