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Exploring The Relationship Between Anxiety Sensitivity And Heart Rate Variability, Bethany Gourley

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Anxiety sensitivity (AS) is a multifaceted construct based on individual beliefs that anxiety symptoms and sensations will have harmful consequences. In general, literature demonstrates three underlying dimensions of AS: fear of cognitive dyscontrol (i.e., cognitive concerns), fear of physiological anxiety sensations (i.e., physical concerns), and fear of negative evaluation (i.e., social concerns). Elevated AS and underlying dimensions have been shown to underlie psychopathology, including anxiety and depression broadly, and are predictive of fear responding in the context of behavioral challenge paradigms whereby individuals with elevated AS demonstrate higher fear and sympathetic nervous system activation. To date, few studies have investigated …