Dr. Thomas L. Rodebaugh, Ph.D.
Director
Dr. Rodebaugh is a clinical psychologist with a focus on anxiety disorders in adults, particularly generalized social anxiety disorder. He is also interested in psychotherapy outcome and process. His research focuses on improving the assessment and treatment of anxiety, as well as increasing understanding of the factors that maintain and reduce anxiety (e.g., attention bias). He is particularly interested in the relationship between social anxiety and interpersonal processes, particularly in regard to friendship. More generally, he is interested in further evaluating and enhancing exposure treatment across the anxiety disorders. He has a long-standing interest in the integration of social psychological research (e.g., dual process theories; self-regulation theories) into the domain of clinical psychology, and the selection of appropriate statistical models (e.g., structural equation models; item response theory models) for evaluating measures and testing hypotheses. Recently his work has expanded to include active projects concerning post-traumatic stress disorder.
Dr.
Rodebaugh’s primary clinical focus is on supervising graduate students
who provide psychotherapy at the department’s
To contact Dr. Rodebaugh, please email him at rodebaugh@wustl.edu
To find out about articles published by Dr. Rodebaugh
click here.
Read Dr. Rodebaugh’s curriculum vitae.
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Michelle Lim, Ph.D.
Post-doctoral Research Associate
Dr Michelle Lim (BA, University of Melbourne; MPsych, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology; PhD, University of Melbourne) is a postdoctoral research fellow with an interest in psychotic disorders and social anxiety. She commenced at the Anxiety and Psychotherapy Laboratory at Washington University in St Louis in June 2011. Michelle has been a registered clinical psychologist in Australia since 2004. She worked with patients with severe mental illness from 2004 to 2007. Between 2007 and 2011, she ran a successful private practice in Melbourne, Australia, while supervising at the Psychology Clinic at the University of Melbourne. During this time Michelle also worked at the Anxiety and Depression Unit at Reconnexion Inc, a specialist clinic for people with anxiety and depressive disorders. Her research interests include cognitive biases in psychopathology, early psychosis, subclinical psychotic symptoms, decision-making processes and social relationships. Michelle enjoys travel, good food and coffee with friends.
To contact Michelle or to obtain her CV, please email her at michelle.lim@wustl.edu
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Erik A. Shumaker, M.A.
Graduate Student
On Internship at the Southern Arizona VA in Tucson, Arizona from 2011-2012
Erik Shumaker (M.A., Washington University in St. Louis) entered graduate school in August 2006. His research interests include assessment of perfectionism, the relationship between social anxiety and perfectionism, and how maladaptive traits predict responses in stressful situations. For his dissertation, he investigated the relationships between perfectionism dimensions and performance on a computer task. He has presented at the annual conferences for the Anxiety Disorders Association of America, the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, and the Association for Psychological Science. In his free time, Erik enjoys watching and playing sports, listening to music, and watching movies. He is currently on internship at the Southern Arizona VA Health Care System in Tucson.
To contact Erik, please email him at shumaker@wustl.edu
To see Erik's Curriculum Vitae, please click here
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Katya C. Fernandez, M.A.
Graduate Student
Katya Fernandez (B.S., Duke University; M.A., Washington University in St. Louis) entered graduate school in August, 2008. Her current research interests include the initiation and maintenance of romantic relationships and friendships in socially anxious individuals, using text analysis software (e.g., LIWC) to study the relationship between specific categories of words and social anxiety in a variety of texts, examining the existence of stereotypes associated with social anxiety, and the role of self-complexity in anxiety and depression. She is also interested in self-affirmation as a method of reducing state social anxiety, in addition to testing blatant benevolence and conspicuous consumption in the context of social anxiety. Katya and Cheri Levinson are undertaking a study looking at positive affect in an exposure intervention and a study examining Facebook and its relation to social anxiety. In her free time, she enjoys writing, dancing, and spending time with friends.
To contact Katya, please email her at fernandez@wustl.edu
To see Katya's Curriculum Vitae, please click here
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Cheri A. Levinson, M.A.
Graduate Student
Cheri Levinson (B.A., University of Kentucky; M.A., Washington
University in St. Louis) entered graduate school in August, 2008. She
currently has two major lines of research: comorbidity between social
anxiety and eating/body image disorders and the effect of culture on
anxiety disorders. Currently, Cheri is testing a theory in which,
negative social evaluation fears (social appearance anxiety and fear of
negative evaluation) are shared vulnerabilities that contribute to both
social anxiety and eating disorders. Cheri is also interested in how
negative social evaluation fears can lead to health outcomes (i.e., high
body fat content) and if evolutionary variables such as exclusion and
appearance are risk factors for both social anxiety and disordered
eating. Cheri is also interested in how cultural variables such as
self-construal, ethnic identity, and acculturation can better inform
current psychological theories and clinical treatment. She will be
presenting two talks at the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive
Therapies 2011 Annual Conference: One detailing a model of shared
vulnerability between eating and social anxiety disorders and one
presenting findings from a study on Facebook and social anxiety. Cheri
will also be presenting several posters that examine negative evaluation
fears, exercise, health, and the effects of talking about ethnic
identity on anxiety. In Cheri's free time she likes to run, spend time
with friends, and take her puppy for walks.
To contact Cheri, please email her at cherialevinson@wustl.edu
To see Cheri's Curriculum Vitae, please click here
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Julia K. Langer, B.A.
Graduate Student
Julia Langer (B.A. University of Wisconsin-Madison) entered graduate school in August, 2009. Her research interests include the relationship between social status concerns in those with higher social anxiety and social interaction behaviors such as gaze aversion. She is also interested in how people with higher social anxiety experience positive emotions and how these experiences can be increased to create more enjoyable social experiences. Julia is currently planning two studies to begin in the fall: one study will investigate the relationship between gaze behavior and social anxiety in social interactions, and the other will test the possibility that people with higher social anxiety lack a bias to expect pleasant outcomes. Julia presented a poster at the World Congress of Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies Conference 2010 on the validity of the Gaze Aversion Rating Scale. She will be presenting a poster on social dominance orientation and social anxiety at the upcoming Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies Conference 2010. In addition, Julia and Cheri Levinson are undertaking a project on the relationship been peer victimization and social anxiety. In her free time, Julia enjoys running, reading, and craft projects.
To contact Julia, please email her at jklanger@wustl.edu
To see Julia's Curriculum Vitae, please click here