Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Psychiatr. Sep 22, 2017; 7(3): 133-147
Published online Sep 22, 2017. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v7.i3.133
Biobehavioral assessment of the anxiety disorders: Current progress and future directions
Deah Abbott, Yasmin Shirali, J Kyle Haws, Caleb W Lack
Deah Abbott, Yasmin Shirali, J Kyle Haws, Caleb W Lack, Department of Psychology, University of Central Oklahoma, Edmond, OK 73134, United States
Author contributions: Abbott D, Shirali Y and Haws JK researched and wrote the article; Lack CW supervised and edited.
Conflict-of-interest statement: Authors declare no conflict of interests for this article.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Caleb W Lack, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Central Oklahoma, 100 N. University Drive, Edmond, OK 73134, United States. clack@uco.edu
Telephone: +1-405-9745456
Received: March 28, 2017
Peer-review started: March 29, 2017
First decision: May 9, 2017
Revised: June 8, 2017
Accepted: June 30, 2017
Article in press: July 3, 2017
Published online: September 22, 2017
Core Tip

Core tip: Anxiety disorders are some of the most commonly comorbidly- and mis-diagnosed disorders in the DSM-5. The current system of assessment and diagnosis depends on clinician and client report measures, which are subjective and prone to bias. Recent technological advances make it possible to utilize the biobehavioral measures from eye-tracking and electrocardiogram devices in clinical settings. These devices can provide a much needed dimensional, objective, and change-sensitive component to current diagnostic and treatment-efficacy assessment protocols. This article summarizes the status of and outlines future directions for research on this important topic.