Étude préliminaire de l’effet de l’activation comportementale sur les biais attentionnels envers l’information émotionnelle à valence positive et négative

Abstract

ObjectivesBehavioural activation improves mental health and psychological functioning, especially among patients with depression. Behavioural activation is associated with the improvement of several mechanisms, such as activation, avoidance, and environmental reward. Behavioural activation may also improve cognitive control abilities. Finally, studies on neurological changes suggested an improvement of the functioning of reward structures in response to positive stimuli after a BA treatment. Yet, uncertainty abounds regarding the putative mechanisms of behavioural activation. Prominent cognitive models of depression posit that attentional bias for negative and positive information may play an important role in the maintenance of a depressive mood. Inspired by these models and the results by the mentioned above, we investigated the impact of behavioural activation treatment for depression on attentional selectivity for sad and positive materials. We predicted that (1) attention to sad faces would be reduced after the intervention, (2) attention to happy faces would be enhanced after the intervention, and finally (3) the intervention would improve depressive symptomatology, activation, avoidance and environmental reward. Materials and methodEight undergraduate students with medium to moderate depressive symptoms participated in a six-week behavioural activation intervention. A dot-probe task with happy and sad faces and self-report questionnaires focused on depression, activation, avoidance, and environmental reward were administered before and after the intervention. ResultsDepression, avoidance, and environmental reward scores improved after treatment with large effect sizes. Behavioural activation likewise improves attentional bias for positive faces. However, there was no attentional bias for sad faces at either evaluation time. ConclusionThe preliminary nature of our findings notwithstanding, this study is the first to provide evidence of behavioural activation impact on attentional selectivity vis-à-vis positive material.