The proposed career development plan will provide the candidate with the necessary background experiences to pursue an independent research career studying the mechanisms of change in cognitive behavioral therapies for anxiety disorders. With the help of her mentoring team, the candidate will gain additional experience with translational research approaches, decentering and mindfulness-based approaches, interventions research, advanced statistical training, culturally sensitive research, and the responsible conduct of research. The objective of the research plan is to investigate the role of two proposed mechanisms of change (decentering and emotional processing) both experimentally and through interventions research. The first proposed study will investigate whether specific techniques used in therapy produce increases in decentering, or the ability to observe thoughts and feelings as objective events in the mind, and whether these increases in decentering are associated with changes in anxious responses within a laboratory based study of social anxiety disorder. The second study will expand on the first by examining the role and interaction of the proposed mechanisms of change within Cognitive Behavioral Group Therapy for social anxiety disorder. Throughout therapy, proposed mechanisms of change (decentering and emotional processing) will be assessed to test a multidimensional model of change that proposes that a combination of these factors leads to the most therapeutic change. Results from these studies will serve as a preliminary test of the multidimensional model of change, which will help determine the direction of future investigations into therapeutic change mechanisms and intervention development for the treatment of anxiety disorders.
This work has the potential to inform current treatment practice to maximize the therapeutic benefit for clients with social anxiety disorder. If the hypotheses are supported than strategies to promote decentering and emotional processing would likely lead to improved clinical outcomes. This may ultimately reduce the number of sessions needed to treat this disorder by maximizing the effectiveness of treatment components.
