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Updated: Aug 3, 2026

The Successive Alleys Test of Anxiety in Mice and Rats
Published on: June 17, 2013
Latent structure of anxiety: taxometric exploration
Roman Kotov1, Norman B Schmidt, Darin R Lerew
1Department of Psychology, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA.
Abstract:
Taxometrics is a statistical tool that can be used to discern categories from continua. Taxometric analyses (MAXCOV and MAXEIG) were conducted in a large nonclinical sample (N=1,215) to determine whether extreme anxiety forms a distinct psychopathological category, an anxiety taxon. Anxiety was operationalized with self-report measures of subjective anxiety, anxious cognitive style, physiological arousal, and anxiety-related impairment. Procedures consistently identified a taxon with a prevalence of approximately 11%. Examination of the taxon's convergent and discriminant validity revealed that it reflects general distress rather than physiological arousal. Taxon membership showed some evidence of incremental validity.
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