Welcome to the Regulation of Emotion in Anxiety and Depression (READ) Lab!

In the read Lab, we focus on…

…understanding and treating chronic and recurrent forms of distress and perseverative negative thinking (PNT; e.g., worry, rumination, self-criticism), which are present across various diagnoses and contexts. Our research program uses an affect science perspective to understand and treat these conditions, particularly in their most complex forms (high levels of comorbidity, unyielding course, poor life satisfaction, refractory response to treatment) with the aim of expanding our knowledge of their etiology, development, and maintenance across the lifespan.

Currently, Our Work involves Testing Aspects of An Emotion Regulation Model...

...that highlights how emotions are poorly processed and become dysregulated in these conditions and contexts. This perspective stresses several emotion characteristics that are relevant to adult psychopathology and its treatment.

First, although not always productive, emotions are signals for both approach and avoidance motivations in service of survival adaptation or societal function. Second, emotions are defined by multiple interacting systems, which operate through both convergent and divergent means. Third, these emotion systems mutually regulate each other to maintain stability through changing environmental contexts.

This regulatory function of emotions has been shown to be important to wellbeing and to the promotion of mental health. In contrast, disorder and dysfunction may represent perturbations to the flexible balancing of these emotional response systems.

Our Work IS CURRENTLY FOCUSED ON:

(1) experimental delineation of multi-componential (i.e., subjective, physiological, neural, immunological) processes that contribute to emotion reactivity and dysregulation

(2) development of Emotion Regulation Therapy (ERT), which integrates traditional and contemporary behavioral and experiential approaches into an affect science framework

(3) examination of targeted biobehavioral mechanisms (i.e., motivation awareness, attentional regulation, metacognitive regulation, and intentional action) during ERT and briefer computerized targeted emotion regulation trainings to determine whether these mechanisms mediate symptomatic and functional outcomes.