Disengage to Reengage: An Adaptation of the Additional Singleton Paradigm as a New Approach to Attention Bias Modification Training

Anxiety, a global health-related burden, is associated with preferential processing of threat, which is referred to as attention bias. Such bias is thought to be due to heightened attentional engagement to threat and/or difficulties in disengagement from threat, it can be altered through Attention Bias Modification (ABM) Training. Unfortunately, the predominantly used task in ABM training shows low effectiveness. Thus, this study aims to develop a new task that trains threat disengagement using a visual search task with emotionally valent faces. Thirty-four participants took part in an online experiment and completed a Go/ No-go-like Visual Search task designed to train disengagement from negative stimuli. Reaction time and accuracy were measured to examine the effect of the task while trait anxiety scores were gathered to examine the relationship between anxiety and attention bias. The results revealed no significant differences in threat disengagement as a function of training and...Show moreAnxiety, a global health-related burden, is associated with preferential processing of threat, which is referred to as attention bias. Such bias is thought to be due to heightened attentional engagement to threat and/or difficulties in disengagement from threat, it can be altered through Attention Bias Modification (ABM) Training. Unfortunately, the predominantly used task in ABM training shows low effectiveness. Thus, this study aims to develop a new task that trains threat disengagement using a visual search task with emotionally valent faces. Thirty-four participants took part in an online experiment and completed a Go/ No-go-like Visual Search task designed to train disengagement from negative stimuli. Reaction time and accuracy were measured to examine the effect of the task while trait anxiety scores were gathered to examine the relationship between anxiety and attention bias. The results revealed no significant differences in threat disengagement as a function of training and no correlation between trait anxiety scores and threat disengagement. These findings may be attributable to the small sample size used or to the participants showing a lack of attention bias even before training commenced. Despite the study’s null findings, suggestions on how to improve the paradigm are presented and discussed to guide future studies to come up with an effective ABM training task.Show less

Leiden University Student Repository

Documents

In Collections

Disengage to Reengage: An Adaptation of the Additional Singleton Paradigm as a New Approach to Attention Bias Modification Training