Cognitive Anxiety Sensitivity Treatment (CAST) is a computerized treatment designed to model the educational and behavioral techniques used in anxiety treatments. The psychoeducational component focuses on the nature of stress and its effects on the mind and body. CAST was designed to dispel myths concerning the immediate dangers of stress on cognitive processes. Individuals are taught that psychological arousal from stress is not dangerous and that they may have developed a conditioned fear to these sensations, as indicated by their elevated levels of AS cognitive concerns. In addition to psychoeducation, interoceptive exposure exercises will be introduced to correct the conditioned fear response. The program will demonstrate exercises that elicit sensations consistent with AS cognitive concerns.

The Physical Health Education Training (PHET) control condition was designed to control for the effects of general education provided in the CAST condition. Participants will be presented with information regarding the importance and benefits of maintaining a healthy lifestyle. The program will discuss diet, alcohol and water consumption, exercise, sexual health, and sleep. PHET will instruct the participant how to monitor their daily health habits in order to achieve a healthy lifestyle. PHET will take approximately 45 minutes to complete. Based on the findings of Schmidt and colleagues (in press), this intervention does not appear to exert a strong effect on AS.

Cognitive Anxiety Sensitivity Treatment (CAST) is a computerized treatment designed to model the educational and behavioral techniques used in anxiety treatments. The psychoeducational component focuses on the nature of stress and its effects on the mind and body. CAST was designed to dispel myths concerning the immediate dangers of stress on cognitive processes. Individuals are taught that psychological arousal from stress is not dangerous and that they may have developed a conditioned fear to these sensations, as indicated by their elevated levels of AS cognitive concerns. In addition to psychoeducation, interoceptive exposure exercises will be introduced to correct the conditioned fear response. The program will demonstrate exercises that elicit sensations consistent with AS cognitive concerns.

The ASI-3 is an 18-item self-report measure of AS. This scale was developed to provide a more stable measure of the three most widely recognized AS subfactors (cognitive, social and physical concerns) than the original ASI provides. The measure has shown good psychometric properties (Taylor et al., 2007).

The DOCS is a 20-item measure that assesses the four dimensions of OC symptoms most reliably replicated in previous structural research. This measure includes four subscales: contamination, responsibility, unacceptable thoughts, and symmetry. The DOCS demonstrates excellent psychometric properties and has been validated in both clinical and non-clinical samples (Abramowitz et al., 2010).