Department of Psychology

Michael Vasey

My current research activities reflect a lifespan developmental psychopathology perspective. My current research projects include participants in middle childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and older adulthood. Rather than being focused on a specific set of disorders, my research is focused on factors that are of relevance to understanding a wide range of emotional problems. Specifically, I am interested in the processes involved in the allocation of attention to negative emotion-relevant information and in the control of attention. To date, my students and I have found evidence of biased attention allocation for negative stimuli related to anxiety, depression, and reactive (but not proactive) aggression. This work has recently led to a focus on individual differences in the capacity for attentional (or effortful) control and its role as a moderator of risk for psychopathology. We are currently exploring the implications of a model of risk for understanding the etiology of anxiety and depression in children, adults, and older adults. We have also recently demonstrated that the attentional bias in favor of negative information that characterizes anxious individuals can be eliminiated through attention allocation training and, remarkably, elimination of this bias appears to produce significant reductions in anxiety symptoms. We are currently continuing this attentional training work with adults and planning an extension to children.

A second line of research is an outgrowth of my recent work on attentional biases in childhood aggression. This research has led to a wide range of projects focused on aggression and antisocial behavior problems in youth. These projects include examination of the unique correlates of reactive and proactive aggression, the role of inflated self-esteem in aggression, the assessment of callous-unemotional traits and psychopathy in youth, and the moderating influence of parenting practices and parent-child relationships on the relation between callous-unemotional traits and antisocial behavior problems in youth.

Selected Publications

Lonigan, C. J., Vasey, M. W., Phillips, B, & Hazen, R. (in press). Temperament, anxiety, and the processing of emotion-relevant stimuli. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology.

Schippell, P. L., Vasey, M. W., Cravens-Brown, L. M., & Bretveld, R. (2003). Suppressed attention to rejection, ridicule, and failure cues: A specific correlate of reactive but not proactive aggression in youth. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 32, 40-55.

Vasey, M. W., Dalgleish, T., Silverman, W. K. (2003). Research on information-processing factors in child and adolescent psychopathology: A critical commentary. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 32, 81-93.

Vasey, M. W., & Dadds, M. R. (2001). An introduction to the developmental psychopathology of anxiety. In M. W. Vasey, & M. R. Dadds (Eds.), The developmental psychopathology of anxiety (pp. 3-26). New York: Oxford University Press.

Vasey, M. W., & Dadds, M. R., (Eds.) (2001). The developmental psychopathology of anxiety. New York: Oxford University Press.

Vasey, M. W., & MacLeod, C. (2001). Information processing factors in childhood anxiety: A developmental perspective. In M. W. Vasey, & M. R. Dadds (Eds.), The developmental psychopathology of anxiety (pp. 253-277). New York: Oxford University Press.

Mackinaw-Koons, B., & Vasey, M. W. (2000). Considering sex differences in anxiety and its disorders across the lifespan: A construct validation approach. Applied and Preventive Psychology, 9, 191-209.

Vasey, M. W., & Lonigan, C. J. (2000). Considering the clinical utility of performance-based measures of childhood anxiety. Journal of Clinical Child Psychology, 29 493-508.

Vasey, M. W., & Ollendick, T. H. (2000). Anxiety. In M. Lewis and A. Sameroff (Eds.), Handbook of developmental psychopathology (2nd ed., pp. 511-529). New York: Plenum.

Ollendick, T. H., & Vasey, M. W. (1999). Developmental theory and the practice of clinical child psychology. Journal of Clinical Child Psychology, 28, 457-466.

Daleiden, E. L., & Vasey, M. W. (1997). An information-processing perspective on childhood anxiety. Clinical Psychology Review, 17, 407-429.

Vasey, M. W., & Daleiden, E. L. (1996). Information-processing pathways to cognitive interference in childhood. In I. G. Sarason, G. Pierce, & B. Sarason (Eds.), Cognitive interference: Theory, methods, and findings (pp. 117-138). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Vasey, M. W., El-Hag, N., & Daleiden, E. L. (1996). Anxiety and the processing of emotionally-threatening stimuli: Distinctive patterns of selective attention among high- and low-test-anxious children. Child Development, 67, 1173-1185.

Vasey, M. W., Daleiden, E. L., Williams, L. L., & Brown, L. M. (1995). Biased attention in childhood anxiety disorders: A preliminary study. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 23, 267-279.

Department of Psychology

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Michael Vasey

Selected Publications