Evaluation of Behavioral Distress Tolerance Task Stability Across Settings

Distress tolerance (DT) is considered to be a trait-like factor encompassing an individual’s behavioral and/or perceived ability to withstand negative affective states. Behavioral measures of DT are being increasingly utilized, however, these tasks have been implemented in studies prior to thoroughly establishing the psychometric properties. The present study aimed to evaluate the reliability of two DT behavioral tasks (Breath-Holding Task [BHT], computer-based Paced Auditory Serial Addition Task [PASAT-C]) in different settings (laboratory, online) among a sample of college students. Participants completed the tasks during two sessions, approximately one week apart. 52 participants were in the laboratory condition, and 65 were in the online condition. There were three main findings: a) test-retest reliability estimates were within acceptable ranges for both the BHT and PASAT-C, b) BHT performance differed significantly by modality while PASAT-C performance did not, c) number of distractors endorsed was not significantly associated with quit latency on either task