Negative Attentional Bias Research Articles

Facial expression recognition in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus.

Facial expression recognition is an important social cognitive skill. Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) affects cognitive function. Whether facial expression recognition deficits and attention bias exist in T2DM is unknown. Facial expression search task is a commonly used paradigm to measure emotional processing. In this study, facial expression recognition features of T2DM patients were studied by facial expression search task. Thirty outpatients with T2DM and 30 normal controls matched by sex, age and education etc. were selected. Standardized stick drawings with happy, neutral and sad emotion expressions were selected as stimulus materials, and facial expression search task was used to Search for expression targets in neutral interferers to compare the response time between the two groups. The reaction time of identifying the positive expression (happy) in the diabetic group and the control group was greater than that of the negative expression (sad). The response time of the diabetic group to identify positive expressions and negative expressions was greater than that of the control group. The slope of the search for positive expressions in the diabetic group was 419.14 ms, and the search slope for negative expressions in the diabetic group was 237.97 ms. The slope of the search for positive expressions in the control group was 300.4 ms, and that of the control group for negative expressions was 119.07 ms. In the diabetic group and the control group, the reaction time of identifying the positive expression was positively delayed compared with the negative expression, which showed a negative attention bias; Patients with type 2 diabetes significantly prolonged the response time of recognizing positive expression and negative expression without obvious clinical cognitive impairment.

Stressful Life Events, Cognitive Biases, and Symptoms of Depression in Young Adults.

Although the link between stressful experiences and depression has been supported in numerous studies, the specific mechanisms of this relationship are still unclear. Cognitive theories of depression postulate that the influence of stress on depression may be modified by cognitive factors. The aim of the present study was to examine the interplay between negative life events, cognitive vulnerability factors, and depressive symptoms. It was hypothesized that the relationship between negative life events and symptoms of depression is shaped by rumination and cognitive biases. The study sample consisted of 108 young adults (19 men and 89 women; M = 20.31; SD = 1.84). Memory bias and attentional bias were assessed using the Attentional Blink Task and the Memory Task, respectively. Rumination and depressive symptoms were assessed via self-report questionnaires. Logistic regression and moderation analyses were conducted to examine the relationship between the study variables. Stressful life events, rumination and memory bias were found to be significantly related to depressive symptoms. Moderation analyses revealed that there is a positive relationship between negative life events and depressive symptoms but only among individuals characterized by an elevated level of rumination and among participants exhibiting negative attentional bias. The results provide further evidence for cognitive models of depression.

Understanding associations between negatively biased attention and depression and social anxiety: positively biased attention is key

ABSTRACTBackground and objectives: Although research supports the premise that depressed and socially anxious individuals direct attention preferentially toward negative emotional cues, little is known about how attention to positive emotional cues might modulate this negative attention bias risk process. The purpose of this study was to determine if associations between attention biases to sad and angry faces and depression and social anxiety symptoms, respectively, would be strongest in individuals who also show biased attention away from happy faces.Methods: Young adults (N = 151; 79% female; M = 19.63 years) completed self-report measures of depression and social anxiety symptoms and a dot probe task to assess attention biases to happy, sad, and angry facial expressions.Results: Attention bias to happy faces moderated associations between attention to negatively valenced faces and psychopathology symptoms. However, attention bias toward sad faces was positively and significantly related to depression symptoms only for individuals who also selectively attended toward happy faces. Similarly, attention bias toward angry faces was positively and significantly associated with social anxiety symptoms only for individuals who also selectively attended toward happy faces.Conclusions: These findings suggest that individuals with high levels of depression or social anxiety symptoms attend preferentially to emotional stimuli across valences.

Modulating reward learning with transcranial direct current stimulation: Applications for the treatment of depression

Background Negative attention biases are thought to be a causal factor in the development and maintenance of depression. It has been proposed that this bias may be caused by a belief that negative events are more informative than positive events. In the present study, it was investigated whether transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), a non-invasive brain stimulation technique, could modulate information content estimates for rewarding and aversive outcomes in healthy adults [1] , [2] . Methodology Forty healthy volunteers aged 18–45 participated in one sham and one active tDCS session in randomised order. During each session, participants completed an information bias learning task (IBLT) while receiving tDCS targeting bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) for 20 minutes at 2 mA. Information content estimates for positive and negative outcomes were reflected in participants’ learning rates on the IBLT, which were derived from the data with the use of computational models. Results Active bifrontal tDCS was associated with an increase in learning rates for positive but not negative outcomes on the IBLT (F = 5.47, P Conclusion These findings provide the first experimental evidence that modulating activity in the DLPFC can enhance learning from positive stimuli in healthy adults. This change in learning rates suggests an alteration in participants’ beliefs of how informative positive outcomes are compared to negative outcomes. Additional research is needed to assess whether this effect of tDCS can be harnessed to ameliorate negative attention biases associated with psychiatric disorders. The present results provide an exciting early step in the development of novel interventions for depression.

F114. Dynamic Functional Alterations of the Emotional Face Processing Network in Young People With Depression

Emotional face processing is altered within major depressive disorder (MDD), likely stemming from a negative attentional bias. Despite this, limited research has investigated the relationship between brain mechanisms and symptomology during adolescence. The present study examined effective connectivity during emotional processing in youth with MDD compared with healthy controls.

The Interplay Between Stress, Inflammation, and Emotional Attention: Relevance for Depression.

Depression is among the most significant public mental health issues. A growing body of research implicates inflammation in the etiology and pathophysiology of depression. Yet, the results are somewhat inconsistent, leading to burgeoning attempts to identify associations between components of innate immune system involved in inflammation and specific symptoms of depression, including attention to emotional information. Negative attentional bias, defined as a tendency to direct attention toward negatively valenced information, is one of the core cognitive features of depression and is reliably demonstrated in depressed and vulnerable individuals. Altered attentional processing of emotional information and immunological changes are often precipitated by stressful events. Psychological stress triggers inflammatory activity and affective-cognitive changes that play a critical role in the onset, maintenance, and recurrence of depression. Using various designs, recent studies have reported a positive relationship between markers of inflammation and negative attentional bias on behavioral and neural levels, suggesting that the association between inflammation and emotional attention might represent a neurobiological pathway linking stress and depression. This mini-review summarizes current research on the reciprocal relationships between different types of stressors, emotional attention, inflammation, and depression, and discusses potential neurobiological mechanisms underlying these interactions. The integration provided aims to contribute toward understanding how biological and psychological processes interact to influence depression outcomes.

Ventral attention-network effective connectivity predicts individual differences in adolescent depression

BackgroundStimulus-driven negative attention bias is a central deficit in depression and might play an important role in vulnerability to depression Adolescents are susceptible to depression. Thus, investigating the neural correlates of attention bias in adolescents is a critical step for identifying neural markers of early onset of depression. Previous studies have shown that the ventral attention network (VAN), which includes bilateral ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) and bilateral temporal-parietal junction (TPJ), is the key brain network for stimulus-driven attention. However, the relationship between depression and effective connectivity within the VAN in adolescents is poorly understood. MethodWe employed resting-state fMRI to assess the relationship between directional effective connectivity within the VAN and depression scores in 216 healthy adolescents. ResultsUsing stochastic dynamic modeling, we found that individuals who exhibited higher self-reported depression showed stronger effective connectivity between right VLPFC and left TPJ within the VAN. LimitationThe level of depression in this study was assessed with self-reported questionnaire. This measure might be more influenced by current mood in adolescents than that in adults. Future studies should emplo more objective measures to index levels of depression. ConclusionsOur findings indicate that effective connectivity between right VLPFC and left TPJ could at least partially serve as a biomarker for bottom-up processing of depression in adolescents.

Attention biases and social-emotional development in preschool-aged children who have been exposed to domestic violence.

School-aged children and adolescents exposed to domestic violence (DV) disproportionality attend to threatening and sad cues in their environment. This bias in attention has been found to predict elevations in symptoms of psychopathology. Studies have yet to explore attention biases using eyetracking technology in preschool-aged children with DV exposure. This study investigated whether preschool-aged children exposed to DV show vigilance to angry and sad faces versus happy faces and a target non-face stimulus relative to non-exposed children, and whether such vigilance relates to child social-emotional development. Preschool-aged children were recruited from a large, diverse, urban community. DV-exposed children were recruited from a dyadic, mother-child treatment group specifically designed for, and restricted to, mothers who have experienced domestic violence (DV-exposed group, n = 23). Children with no prior exposure to DV and their mothers were recruited within the same community (non-exposed group, n = 32). Children completed an eye-tracking task to assess their attention to face stimuli and mothers rated their children's social-emotional development. Total duration of fixations were analyzed. Results showed that DV-exposed children have a significantly stronger attention bias away from sad faces (p = 0.03; d = 0.62) and neutral faces (p = 0.02; d = 0.70) relative to non-exposed children, and this attention bias away from sad and neutral faces is associated with child social-emotional problems. Contrary to our hypothesis, no bias towards anger was found for DV-exposed versus non-exposed children. This study contributes to growing evidence that young children's negative attention biases influence functioning and have important implications for children's well-being and development.

How state anxiety and attentional bias interact with each other: The moderating effect of cognitive appraisal.

In the present study, we conducted four experiments to explore how state anxiety influences attentional bias, and vice versa, as well as the moderating effect of cognitive appraisal in this relationship. Experiment 1 focused on whether induced state anxiety could lead to attentional bias. Experiment 2 explored the influence of attentional bias on state anxiety under stressful conditions. Experiments 3 and 4 investigated the moderating effect of cognitive appraisal on the interaction between state anxiety and attentional bias. Our main findings were that state anxiety directly leads to attentional bias, whereas negative attentional bias increases state anxiety under stressful conditions. Moreover, cognitive appraisal moderates the influence of attentional bias on state anxiety, but not the reverse influence. The implications of our study are that it provides empirical evidence for the interaction between state anxiety and attentional bias, and also that it offers insight into the different moderating effects of cognitive appraisal on the relationship.

Correlation analysis between attentional bias and somatic symptoms in depression

Objective: To investigate the relationship between attentional bias and the severity of depression as assessed by the TORAWARE State and physical symptoms. Methods: We enrolled 55 patients with depression and 60 healthy. The Hamilton Depression Scale (HAMD-24), Somatic Self-rating Scale (SSS), and the Chinese Version of the Self-rating Scale for the TORAWARE State of Neurosis (SSTN) were selected to assess the severity of psychological symptoms. Dot-probe tasks were used to detect attentional bias. We then analyzed the correlation of attentional bias with the total scores on the symptom scales. Results: The negative attentional bias and negative disengaging index scores were both greater than 0 (t = 3.15 and 2.78, respectively; all P < 0.01). The negative attention bias score was positively correlated with the SSTN and negative disengaging index scores (r = 0.29 and 0.53, respectively; all P < 0.05). SSTN score was positively correlated with the total HAMD and SSS scores (r = 0.34 and 0.38, respectively; all P < 0.05). Conclusion: There is no direct correlation between negative attentionional bias and depression. It may be through the intermediate mechanism of TORAWARE State to influence symptoms.

Looking While Unhappy: A Mood-Congruent Attention Bias Toward Sad Adult Faces in Children.

A negative mood-congruent attention bias has been consistently observed, for example, in clinical studies on major depression. This bias is assumed to be dysfunctional in that it supports maintaining a sad mood, whereas a potentially adaptive role has largely been neglected. Previous experiments involving sad mood induction techniques found a negative mood-congruent attention bias specifically for young individuals, explained by an adaptive need for information transfer in the service of mood regulation. In the present study we investigated the attentional bias in typically developing children (aged 6–12 years) when happy and sad moods were induced. Crucially, we manipulated the age (adult vs. child) of the displayed pairs of facial expressions depicting sadness, anger, fear and happiness. The results indicate that sad children indeed exhibited a mood specific attention bias toward sad facial expressions. Additionally, this bias was more pronounced for adult faces. Results are discussed in the context of an information gain which should be stronger when looking at adult faces due to their more expansive life experience. These findings bear implications for both research methods and future interventions.

Transdiagnostic school‐based intervention for adolescents with early persistent psychiatric symptoms: An initial single‐group effect study

Mental health intervention programs for adolescents generally focus on specific symptoms, such as anxiety or depression. Psychiatric symptoms in adolescence are often heterogeneous, transient and shift over time. These characteristics require a transdiagnostic approach with emphasis on positive psychological development. This study aimed to examine the feasibility and effectiveness of Mastermind, a novel transdiagnostic intervention targeting general underlying mechanisms of psychiatric symptoms in adolescents. Adolescents were screened for psychiatric symptoms with the Strengths and Difficulties Scale in a school-based program in two consecutive years. Adolescents were eligible for the intervention when they had psychiatric symptoms at both screening assessments. Participants received an 8 weeks program containing elements of empowerment and attention bias modification. Psychiatric symptoms were assessed before the start of the intervention, immediately after the intervention and at 6-month follow-up. A total of 241 adolescents were eligible for the intervention, of whom 80 participated (mean age 12.5 years). Generalized Estimating Equations, adjusted for gender and educational level, showed a decrease of negative attention bias, psychotic, anxiety, depression and behavioural symptoms immediately after intervention. The effects remained at follow-up. Overall risk for psychiatric disorders, distress and low self-esteem had decreased at follow-up. A simple two-step school-based screening can identify adolescents with persistent psychiatric symptoms. The Mastermind transdiagnostic group intervention may be effective to reduce psychiatric symptoms, enhance self-esteem and lower the risk for developing psychiatric disorders.

Digging deeper in the differential effects of inflammatory and psychosocial stressors in remitted depression: Effects on cognitive functioning

BackgroundMajor Depressive Disorder (MDD) covers a wide spectrum of symptoms, including cognitive dysfunction, which can persist during remission. Both inflammatory states and psychosocial stress play a role in MDD pathogenesis. MethodsThe effects of inflammatory (i.e., Salmonella typhi vaccine) and psychosocial stressor (i.e., Trier Social Stress Test), as well as their combination were investigated on cognition in women (aged 25–45 years, n = 21) with (partially) remitted MDD and healthy controls (n = 18) in a single-blind placebo-controlled study. In a crossover design, patients received on the first day one of the aforementioned interventions and on the other day a placebo, or vice versa, with a washout period of 7–14 days. Short-term and verbal memory, working memory, attention, verbal fluency, information processing speed, psychomotor function, and measures of attentional bias to emotions were measured. Exploratory analyses were performed to assess the correlation between biomarkers of inflammation and the Hypothalamic–Pituitary–Adrenal axis and cognitive functioning. ResultsIn patients, inflammatory stress decreased information processing speed and verbal memory, and increased working memory; after psychosocial stress, there was an increase in attention. There was also an increased negative attentional bias in patients after inflammatory stress. Neither stressor had any effect in controls. LimitiationsLimitations are the relatively small sample size and antidepressant use by a part of the participants. The effects of the stressors were also measured a relatively short period after administration. ConculsionPatients were sensitive to the cognitive effects of inflammation and psychosocial stress on cognition, while controls were not.

Effect of dietary restraint and mood state on attentional processing of food cues

Background and objectivesResearch linking dietary restraint to attentional bias toward food cues has been equivocal, suggesting that dietary restraint may only influence attentional processing of food in certain contexts. The present study examined whether negative mood strengthens the association between dietary restraint and attention bias for food. MethodsHealthy female participants were randomized to either a neutral (n = 47) or negative mood (n = 49) induction. Participants then completed a visual search task featuring targets displayed adjacent to pictures of palatable food, musical instruments, or non-instrument filler objects. Attention bias for food was operationalized as shorter response latency when the target appeared adjacent to palatable food as compared to musical instruments. Attention bias was examined in a 2 (mood condition) × 2 (picture: food vs. instrument) × 2 (target location: match vs. mismatch) repeated measures ANCOVA, with dietary restraint as a continuous covariate and response latency as the dependent variable. ResultsThough there was no evidence of an interaction between mood condition and dietary restraint, mood had an influence on attention allocation. Contrary to study hypotheses, individuals in the neutral mood condition, but not those in the negative mood condition, responded in a manner indicative of bias toward food. LimitationsAdditional research is necessary to validate the experimental task used in the present study to assess food-specific attentional bias. ConclusionsNeutral mood may be associated with enhanced processing of palatable food cues. Critically, results do not support the hypothesized link between negative mood and attention bias for food.

Feeling left out: depressed adolescents may atypically recruit emotional salience and regulation networks during social exclusion.

Depression is associated with negative attention and attribution biases and maladaptive emotion responsivity and regulation, which adversely impact self-evaluations and interpersonal relationships. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we investigated the neural substrates of these impairments. We compared neural activity recruited by 126 clinically depressed and healthy adolescents (ages 11–17 years) during social exclusion (Exclusion > Inclusion) using Cyberball. Results revealed significant interaction effects within left anterior insula (AI)/inferior frontal gyrus and left middle temporal gyrus. Insula hyperresponsivity was associated with peer exclusion for depressed adolescents but peer inclusion for healthy adolescents. In additional, healthy adolescents recruited greater lateral temporal activity during peer exclusion. Complementary effect size analyses within independent parcellations offered converging evidence, as well as highlighted medium-to-large effects within subgenual/ventral anterior cingulate cortex and lateral prefrontal, lateral temporal and lateral parietal regions implicated in emotion regulation. Depressogenic neural patterns were associated with negative self-perceptions and negative information processing biases. These findings suggest a neural mechanism underlying cognitive biases in depression, as reflected by emotional hyperresponsivity and maladaptive regulation/reappraisal of negative social evaluative information. This study lends further support for salience and central executive network dysfunction underlying social threat processing, and in particular, highlights the anterior insula as a key region of disturbance in adolescent depression.

Cognitive Interpretation Bias: The Effect of a Single Session Moderate Exercise Protocol on Anxiety and Depression.

Research conducted within the cognitive bias modification (CBM) paradigm has revealed that cognitive biases such as negative cognitive interpretation biases contribute to mental health disorders such as anxiety (Beard, 2011). It has been shown that exercise reduces anxiety (Ensari et al., 2015). Exercise has also been found to reduce negative cognitive attention biases (Tian and Smith, 2011), however, no research to date has investigated the effect of exercise on cognitive interpretation bias. The key aims of the current project is to investigate whether moderate exercise reduces self-reported symptoms of depression and stress. Additionally, to establish which intensity of exercise is required to achieve anxiety reduction and reduce an individual’s negative cognitive interpretation biases. Study 1 recruited a healthy sample of adult participants who were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: a walking exercise protocol or a control condition (n = 2 × 12). Participants completed anxiety and cognitive interpretation bias measures before and after the walking exercise or control condition. Those in the walking exercise condition presented less symptoms of trait anxiety on a measure of state and trait anxiety inventory (STAI), compared to controls relative to baseline measures following the intervention. Study 2 recruited frequent exercisers who were assigned to an exercise or control group (n = 2 × 24). Participants completed anxiety, depression, psychological stress, and cognitive interpretation bias measures before and after the exercise or control condition. Following the intervention, negative interpretation biases decreased in the exercise group and stayed stable in the control group. The exercise group also had significantly decreased anxiety, depression, and stress measures after the exercise condition, while controls did not. The research concludes that CBM holds promise for the management of mood disorders and exercise is an effective accompaniment to psychotherapy.

Attentional bias in MDD: ERP components analysis and classification using a dot-probe task

Background and ObjectiveStrands of evidence have supported existence of negative attentional bias in patients with depression. This study aimed to assess the behavioral and electrophysiological signatures of attentional bias in major depressive disorder (MDD) and explore whether ERP components contain valuable information for discriminating between MDD patients and healthy controls (HCs). MethodsElectroencephalography data were collected from 17 patients with MDD and 17 HCs in a dot-probe task, with emotional-neutral pairs as experimental materials. Fourteen features related to ERP waveform shape were generated. Then, Correlated Feature Selection (CFS), ReliefF and GainRatio (GR) were applied for feature selection. For discriminating between MDDs and HCs, k-nearest neighbor (KNN), C4.5, Sequential Minimal Optimization (SMO) and Logistic Regression (LR) were used. ResultsBehaviorally, MDD patients showed significantly shorter reaction time (RT) to valid than invalid sad trials, with significantly higher bias score for sad-neutral pairs. Analysis of split-half reliability in RT indices indicated a strong reliability in RT, while coefficients of RT bias scores neared zero. These behavioral effects were supported by ERP results. MDD patients had higher P300 amplitude with the probe replacing a sad face than a neutral face, indicating difficult attention disengagement from negative emotional faces. Meanwhile, data mining analysis based on ERP components suggested that CFS was the best feature selection algorithm. Especially for the P300 induced by valid sad trials, the classification accuracy of CFS combination with any classifier was above 85%, and the KNN (k = 3) classifier achieved the highest accuracy (94%). ConclusionsMDD patients show difficulty in attention disengagement from negative stimuli, reflected by P300. The CFS over other methods leads to a good overall performance in most cases, especially when KNN classifier is used for P300 component classification, illustrating that ERP component may be applied as a tool for auxiliary diagnosis of depression.

The self-reference processing of cognitive vulnerability of depression individuals: Evidence from ERPs

Compared with normal individuals, the cognitive vulnerability of depression individual is more likely to suffer from depression in the face of stressful events. The same with depression individuals, the cognitive vulnerability of depression individual shows negative attention bias. It is unknown whether there is an increase in self-concern that is similar to those of a depression or not. This article will aim to reveal the self-referential processing of the cognitive vulnerability of depression individual. The self-reference effect is the enhanced speed and quality of processing and memorization observed with respect to information that is related to the individual’s self-concept. According to previous research, the self-reference effect is different in terms of different degrees of intimacy with the core self. Moreover, the brain process is different in its self-reference data treatment. Highly self-relevant stimuli will get faster responses compared with the minimally self-relevant stimuli in the brain. This is called the degree of self-reference processing effect. On the basis of summarizing the previous research, and this study uses the event related potential technology to investigate the degree of the self-reference processing effect in the cognitive vulnerability of depression individual and the associated neural mechanisms. The experiment adopted four kinds of classic oddball stimulation modes, and using the event related potential to investigate the cognitive vulnerability of depression individual and normal self-reference processing effect degree of difference and neural mechanisms. The experiment used three-character non-name lexical phrases as the standard stimulus and a three-character non-lexical phrase as target stimuli. Six categories of stimuli were used in the three-stimulus oddball paradigm. Three sets of self-relevant stimuli, the non-self-relevant stimulus, and two filler stimuli were served as distracters. The name of each participant was used as the highly self-relevant stimulus, and the name of participant’s father was used as the moderating self-relevant stimulus. The name of a Chinese leader was used as the minimally self-relevant stimulus, and the name of the president of the United States was served as the non-self-relevant stimulus. All names were three-Chinese-character long. Familiarity was equivalent (see below) across all sets of stimulus names. We found that: for the latency of P2 and N2, the attention to self- relevant names of the cognitive vulnerability of depression individual was earlier than that of the normal individuals. for the amplitude of P2 and P3, the amplitude induced by the susceptible individuals was significantly smaller than that of the normal individuals. for the P3 averaged amplitudes, the normal individual appeared the degree of self-reference processing effect, highly self-relevant names elicited P3 amplitude were significantly greater than for the moderately self-relevant, and for the moderately self-relevant evoked P3 amplitudes were significantly greater than non-self-relevant name; however, for the cognitive vulnerability of depression individual, highly self-relevant names elicited larger P3 averaged amplitudes significantly greater than the low and non-relevant name, there is only the self-reference effect. Research results showed that there was degree of self-reference processing to the self-reference effect. Highly self-relevant stimuli obtained deeper and more exquisite processing than other self-relevant stimuli, and the degree of self-reference processing effect disappeared for the cognitive vulnerability of depression individual, which may be due to the cognitive vulnerability of depression individual appeared smaller self-concept structure and the phenomenon that they more concerned about the core of self.

Cognitive factors associated with depression and anxiety in adolescents: A two-year longitudinal study

Background/Objective: To examine the roles of anxiety sensitivity and attentional bias in the development of anxiety and depression symptoms among adolescents. Method: 214 grade 7 to grade 10 Hong Kong Chinese students completed a package of psychometric inventories to measure levels of anxiety sensitivity, selective attentional processing, and anxiety and depressive symptoms in 2016 and then again in 2017. Results: Girls, when compared with boys, exhibited more anxiety symptoms and anxiety sensitivity in 2016. They also reported a significant increase in mean depression level from 2016 to 2017. Regression analyses revealed that the physical-concerns dimension of anxiety sensitivity, positive attentional bias, and to a lesser extent negative attentional bias were related to the development of both anxiety and depression symptoms one year later. Fear of mental incapacity could predict depression one year later but not anxiety symptoms. Conclusions: Intervention through anxiety sensitivity training to reduce somatic concerns and attentional bias modification to increase habitual attention to positive stimuli and to disengage from negative stimuli can reduce anxiety and depression symptoms among high school students.

Negative attentional bias for positive recovery-related words as a predictor of treatment success among individuals with an alcohol use disorder

IntroductionThis study assessed relationships between clients' attentional bias (AB) for different types of stimuli and their treatment outcomes. Alcohol AB during detoxification has previously been shown to predict relapse, but further research was needed to clarify this relationship. The current study determined whether AB for recovery-related words would also predict treatment outcome. MethodsParticipants were 45 clients undergoing alcohol detoxification, and a control group of 36 staff members. They rated words for personal relevance in four categories (alcohol-related, neutral, positive change-related, and negative change-related). Participants completed an individualized Stroop task containing their chosen words. They were also assessed on readiness-to-change, difficulties with emotion regulation, drinking problems, anxiety, and depression. Clients were interviewed at a three-month follow-up to determine their treatment outcome. ResultsAs predicted, questionnaire measures did not predict clients' treatment outcome (p > .05). A logistic regression model indicated that the best predictor of treatment outcome was AB for positive change-related words (p = .048), with successful individuals having less AB for these words than for the other word categories. Although this finding was unexpected, it was supported by significant relationships between positive change-related interference scores and continuous measures of drinking at follow-up [i.e. number of units drunk (p = .039) and number of drinking days (p = .018)]. ConclusionsThe results suggest that positive change-related words are a better predictor of treatment outcome than are either alcohol-related words or negative change-related words.