Bowlby’s attachment theory contends that all individuals develop working models of self and significant others, based on early experiences, that have important implications for understanding adult psychopathology. From a social cognitive perspective these “working models” can be conceptualized in terms of relational schemas that have the same functions as other types of schemas (e.g., organizing information, guiding future behavior, etc.). Cognitive vulnerability models have proposed a pessimistic explanatory style that confers vulnerability to depression and a looming maladaptive style that confers vulnerability to anxiety. The present study examines the pattern of relationships between adult romantic attachment, cognitive vulnerabilities to anxiety and depression, self-reported anxious and depressive symptoms, and both general and specific relationship outcomes. Results suggest that higher levels of attachment insecurity were associated with increased psychological symptoms, higher levels of cognitive vulnerabilities, and greater general and relationship impairments. Moreover, cognitive vulnerabilities partially mediated the relationship between adult attachment and anxious and depressive symptoms, suggesting that insecure attachments may represent a developmental antecedent to cognitive vulnerabilities to anxiety and depression.

Considerable research has supported links between disrupted parental bonding, attachment insecurity, and psychopathology. Still, few studies have attempted to integrate these findings within a broader cognitive theory of anxiety. Two studies are presented that examine the links between cognitive vulnerability to anxiety (i.e., the Looming Maladaptive Style: LMS) and parental bonding (Study 1) and perceived parental attachment orientations during childhood (Study 2). Results of Study 1 suggest that low levels of maternal overprotection and high levels of paternal overprotection significantly predict LMS scores, beyond the effects of current anxious and depressive symptoms. Results of Study 2 suggest that retrospective reports of maternal attachment insecurity are associated with significantly higher LMS scores, anxious and depressive symptoms, adult romantic attachment insecurity, and potentially high-risk relationship behaviors. These results are interpreted from the perspective of the Looming Vulnerability Model of anxiety and may increase understanding of the linkage between childhood developmental antecedents and cognitive risk for anxiety.

The articles in this special issue address empirically the application of attachment theory to cognitive vulnerability models of anxiety and depression. The findings from these studies converge on the theme that attachment theory has considerable utility in potentially extending and refining current cognitive vulnerability models through a consideration of interpersonal context and the cognitive mechanisms by which negative interpersonal experiences may confer increased risk to later anxious and depressive symptoms.

Standard cognitive-behavioral therapy gives most of its emphasis to the targeting of negative cognitions for reduction. Yet there may be cases when simply reducingnegative cognitions may not be enough. In the present article, we present several “optimism training” techniques that may be particularly useful for helping patients by increasingthe frequency of positive cognitions and self-statements that foster optimism and motivate adaptive behavior. Specific case examples for clinical use of the optimism techniques are provided. Results of a preliminary outcome study of optimism training are also provided.

This article describes an approach to cognitive case conceptualization and treatment that is based on the “looming vulnerability” model of anxiety. The model assumes that much of what produces anxiety for people in everyday life, as well as in cases of pathological anxiety, is “looming” from their point of reference, or changing dynamically and step-by-step in time to become increasingly risky. That is, they have a “sense of looming vulnerability” to threat—perceptions of threat as moving toward an endpoint or rapidly rising in risk. Anxious individuals manifest biases in their primary cognitive appraisals (a painful sense that perceived threats are rapidly approaching, changing, or escalating in risk), and in consequence, feel “pressed” to urgently cope with or neutralize the looming threat. The net result of their sense of urgency is that they often select maladaptive, rigid coping strategies (e.g., avoidance and escape) and underestimate their personal efficacy to effectively deal with the oncoming dynamic threats (i.e., biased secondary appraisal). We suggest that anxiety is often based on dynamic, story-like scripts, called progressive threat scripts. The present article identifies several ways that cognitive therapists can conceptualize, identify, and modify features of patients’ mental simulations of present or developing threat (i.e., distance, motion, speed, and perspective). The article also addresses several features of anxious patients’ response to threat that are relevant to cognitive case conceptualization and treatment (i.e., generating alternative simulations, time structuring, proactive coping, and the enhancement of dynamic personal efficacy for dealing with rapidly rising risk).

The present study examined the hypothesis, stimulated by the looming vulnerability model of anxiety (Riskind, 1997), that the mental activity of catastrophizing is related to both the general looming maladaptive style and looming vulnerability to potential catastrophes. The looming maladaptive style is a higher-order, more global and abstract characteristic framework that functions as a danger schema to produce cognitive vulnerability to anxiety, whereas looming vulnerability to potential catastrophes is a lower-order sense of looming vulnerability to potential catastrophes in specific situations. In addition, the present study attempted to replicate the findings of Vasey and Borkovec (1992) between catastrophizing, worry, and likelihood, using a self-report version of the structured interview in their study. One hundred thirty-eight undergraduates completed the self-report measure of catastrophizing (LOCO-Q), the looming maladaptive style questionnaire, and several measures of worry. Our results provide strong evidence for the replicability of Vasey and Borkovec’s (1992) findings and provide new evidence for a broader role of looming vulnerability in the cognitive phenomenology of catastrophizing. Specifically, they demonstrate that both looming vulnerability to potential catastrophes and the looming maladaptive style are integrally related to the mental activity of catastrophizing. Further, results suggest the plausibility of a mediated model in which the effects of the general looming maladaptive style are transmitted through specific looming vulnerability to possible catastrophes to produce higher levels of catastrophizing. Additionally, results suggest that the looming maladaptive style is the only variable that significantly predicts gains in catastrophizing over time. The results of this study are consistent with a series of studies that we have conducted in the last several years, demonstrating that the looming maladaptive style functions as a danger schema for threat-related information and produces a cognitive vulnerability to anxiety.