A-287 Attention Shifting Individual Differences Moderate Attention Bias Modification Training Effects Among Formerly Depressed Persons

Abstract

Abstract Objective: Biased information processing towards negative content is associated with depressive disorders and may be reduced by training attention away from dysphoric stimuli (attention bias modification training, ABM). Empirical findings are mixed concerning ABM outcomes within depressed clinical and analog samples, which may reflect methodological differences (e.g., reaction time- vs. eye-tracking-based measurement), and individual attention-shifting differences. This study tests attention-shifting as a moderator of ABM outcomes among adults with depression histories via reaction-time and eye-tracking-based paradigms. Method: Adults (N=197, Mage=26.83, 46% female, n=28 depressed) completed psychiatric interviews and received dot-probe-based ABM (n=126) or sham training (SHAM-ABM) (n=71) in 3 laboratory sessions. Across training conditions, respondents viewed sad-neutral same-actor face pairs with incongruent trials (probe following the neutral face) comprising 85% of the 288 session trials in ABM vs. 50% in SHAM-ABM. Training effects reflect pre-to-post-training change in average reaction times to incongruent (vs. congruent) image-probe trials via another dot-probe task and times to first visual fixation across same-actor sad-neutral face-pairs in response to visual prompts (i.e., a shape framing the target face) collected through E-prime 3.0 and the Tobii x2-60 system. Attention-shifting indexes time-to-first-fixation across neutral-neutral face-pair trials. Results. Pre-training attention-shifting differences moderated training effects when shifting attention away (but not towards) sad faces (F=3.98, p=.047): slow attention-shifting predicted rapid sad-face disengagement for those in SHAM-ABM (ΔM=-61ms, F=7.96, p=.005), but not other conditions. No other training effects emerged for eye-tracking and reaction time indices. Conclusion: Findings support the utility of measuring attention processes via eye-tracking methods, and the need to account for individual attention-shifting differences.