Attentional retraining: A randomized clinical trial for pathological worry

Hazen, Rebecca A.; Vasey, Michael W.; Schmidt, Norman B.

doi:10.1016/j.jpsychires.2008.07.004

Cited by 124 publications

(124 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…The latter study did, however, ATTENTIONAL RE-TRAINING REDUCES CHOCOLATE INTAKE 6 find an effect of attentional bias modification on cigarette craving, with male smokers in the 'attend smoking' group reporting an increased urge to smoke. More generally, attentional bias modification has been shown to reduce symptoms of anxiety (Amir, Beard, Burns & Bomyea, 2009;Hazen, Vasey & Schmidt, 2009;Schmidt, Richey, Buckner & Timpano, 2009) and attenuate emotional responses to a subsequent stressor (MacLeod, Rutherford, Campbell, Ebsworthy & Holker, 2002;See, MacLeod & Bridle, 2009). …”

Section: Attentional Re-training Can Reduce Chocolate Consumptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attentional retraining can reduce chocolate consumption.

Kemps

Tiggemann

Orr

et al. 2014

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied

115

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There is emerging evidence that attentional biases are related to the consumption of substances such as alcohol and tobacco, and that attentional bias modification can reduce unwanted consumption of these substances. We present evidence for the first time that the same logical argument applies in the food and eating domain. We conducted two experiments which used a modified dot probe paradigm to train undergraduate women to direct their attention toward ('attend') or away from ('avoid') food cues (i.e., pictures of chocolate). In Experiment 1, attentional bias for chocolate cues increased in the 'attend' group, and decreased in the 'avoid' group.Experiment 2 showed that these training effects generalised to novel, previously unseen, chocolate pictures. Importantly, attentional re-training affected chocolate consumption and craving. In both experiments, participants in the 'avoid' group ate less chocolate in a so-called taste test than did those in the 'attend' group.Additionally, in Experiment 2, but not in Experiment 1, the 'attend' group reported stronger chocolate cravings following training, whereas the 'avoid' group reported less intense cravings. The results support predictions of cognitive-motivational models of craving and consumption that attentional biases play a causal role in consumption behaviour. Furthermore, they present a promising avenue for tackling unwanted food cravings and (over)eating. Fedoroff, Polivy and Herman (1997, 2003) showed that seeing and smelling freshly baked chocolate-chip cookies increased cravings for, and subsequent consumption, of these cookies. Similarly, Painter, Wansink and Hieggelke (2002) found that office workers ate more chocolates if these were in plain view on the desk than if they were in a drawer. Thus the omnipresence of densely calorific food and associated food images has been accepted as a contributing factor to widespread overeating and the increasing rates of obesity (Westerterp & Speakman, 2008). KeywordsOne influential general theory that provides a coherent account for the observed link between cue exposure and consumption behaviour is Robinson and Berridge's (1993) incentive sensitisation model of craving and addiction. In this model, reward-related cues in the environment, such as drug-associated stimuli, acquire motivational properties, or incentive salience, through classical conditioning (i.e., repeated association between the cue and intake of the rewarding substance).Consequently, these cues come to be perceived as attractive and 'wanted'. As a result, reward-related cues automatically capture (i.e., bias) attention, stimulate craving, and guide behaviour toward substance acquisition and consumption. These processes are regulated by the dopaminergic system, and occur outside of conscious awareness. If the logic of the Incentive Sensitization model is correct and applies to food and eating, then one potential way to curb unwanted (over)consumption of food or other substances might be to modify the underlying attentional processes proposed...

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Section: Attentional Re-training Can Reduce Chocolate Consumptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attentional retraining can reduce chocolate consumption.

Kemps

Tiggemann

Orr

et al. 2014

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied

115

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“…The task involves many experimental trials, over the course of which participants learn to direct attention toward the type of stimuli that predict the probe location; for example, if the probe always replaces negative stimuli, participants develop the habit of attending to negative stimuli generally (a negative attentional bias). Importantly, there is increasing evidence that using such tasks to encourage a positive attentional bias (avoid-threat training) in clinical populations results in improvement in symptoms (Amir, Beard, Burns, & Bomyea, 2009;Dandeneau et al, 2007;Eldara, Ricona, & Bar-Haim, 2008;Hazen, Vasey, & Schmidt, 2008;Schmidt, Richey, Buckner, & Timpano, 2009). Concerns about the generalizability and duration of these training effects have, to some extent, been countered by preliminary evidence that the beneficial effects on anxiety symptoms persist for at least 4 months after training (Schmidt et al, 2009).…”

Section: Synthesismentioning

confidence: 99%

The modification of attentional bias to emotional information: A review of the techniques, mechanisms, and relevance to emotional disorders

Browning

Holmes

Harmer

2010

Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience

216

141

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8A wealth of data from behavioral, neuroimaging, pharmacological, and genetic studies has served to highlight the centrality of attentional processes in our understanding of anxiety and depression. Aberrant deployment of attention, particularly in relation to emotional information, occupies a pivotal position in many of the contemporary models of these disorders in which it is considered a causally relevant, proximal illness process. This view suggests that interventions that modify the habitual deployment of attention to emotional information should impact upon illness expression. In the present article, we will review the evidence that emotional attention may be modified in both experimental and clinical settings. In doing so, we will highlight the data that demonstrate that this modification may be achieved by targeting at least two distinct control mechanisms. Finally, we will consider the implications of this work, particularly with regard to future research and treatment development. What Evidence Links Abnormalities of Emotional Attention and the Emotional Disorders?Both depression and anxiety have been associated with biases in the processing of emotional information; patients with these disorders habitually interpret, attend to, and/or remember information in a more negative manner than do nonclinical control participants (Mathews & MacLeod, 2005). Cognitive theorists suggest that these habits of thought are causal factors in the etiology and maintenance of the disorders (Beck, 1976;Mathews & Mackintosh, 1998;Mathews & MacLeod, 2005;Mogg & Bradley, 1998;Williams, Watts, MacLeod, & Mathews, 1997). Anxiety has particularly been associated with a tendency to attend to threatening information-a phenomenon that has been termed negative attentional bias (see Figure 1 for a summary of the tasks commonly used to assess attentional bias; Fox, Russo, & Georgiou, 2005;MacLeod, Campbell, Rutherford, & Wilson, 2004;Mathews & MacLeod, 1985;Williams, Mathews, & MacLeod, 1996). Recent work, much of it discussed in the body of this article, has employed simple computer-based tasks in order to induce attentional biases in nonclinical populations (for reviews, see MacLeod, Koster, & Fox, 2009;Mathews & MacLeod, 2002). Critically for psychopathology, these studies provide direct support for a causal role of attention in anxiety by demonstrating that inducing a negative attentional bias can lead to symptoms of anxiety in nonclinical participants.In depression, the most consistent cognitive abnormalities were initially described in measures of memory (Gilboa-Schechtman, Erhard-Weiss, & Jeczemien, 2002;Mathews & MacLeod, 2005;Ridout, Astell, Reid, Glen, & O'Carroll, 2003;Williams et al., 1997); however, there has been increasing interest in the possibility that attentional biases may exist in this disorder as well. Specifically, depression has been shown to be associated with a tendency to attend to the spatial location of negative words (Bradley, Mogg, & Lee, 1997;Donaldson, Lam, & Mathews, 2007;Mogg, Bradley, & Williams, 19...

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“…This category included 33 studies about specific topics, such as trait-anxiety, social phobia and posttraumatic stress disorder (26), as well as worrying (3) and stress (4). The analysis of bias training method revealed that, although all studies in this category included a visual probe task, not all used the same stimulus, which varied from words to faces.…”

Section: Anxietymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…62,65 Similar encouraging results were found in two other recent studies. 63,64 In the first, groups were trained either to attend to healthy food or to attend to unhealthy food, and 33 Avoid (-)/control Yes No Amir et al 6 Avoid (-)/control Yes Yes Hazen et al 26 Avoid (-)/control Yes Yes Heeren et al 27 Avoid (-)/control Yes Yes See et al 28 Avoid (-)/control Yes Yes Heeren et al 29 Avoid (-)/control Yes No MacLeod et al 7 Avoid (-)/attend (+) Yes Yes Browning et al 19 Avoid (-)/attend (+) Yes Yes MacLeod et al 34 Avoid (-)/attend (+) Yes Yes Van Bockstaele et al 35 Avoid (-)/attend (+) Yes No Van Bockstaele et al 36 Avoid (-)/attend (+) Yes No Eldar et al 37 Avoid (-)/attend (+) Partly No O'Toole et al 38 Avoid (-)/attend (+) Partly No Heeren et al 39 Attend (-)/control Yes Yes Krebs et al 40 Attend (-)/control Yes Yes Hayes et al 41 Attend (+)/control Yes Yes Li et al 42 Attend (+)/control Yes Yes Taylor et al 43 Attend (+)/control Yes Yes Wadlinger et al 44 Attend (+)/control Yes Yes Cowart et al 46 Avoid (-) Not applicable Not applicable Amir et al 45 Avoid (-) Yes Yes Brosan et al 47 Avoid (-) Yes Yes Heeren et al 48 Avoid (-)/attend (+)/control Yes Yes Klumpp et al 49 Avoid (-)/attend (+)/control No No Boettcher et al 50 Attend ( 51 Avoid (-)/attend (+) Yes Yes Schoenmakers et al 10 Avoid (-)/control Yes No Schoenmakers et al 53 Avoid (-)/control Yes Partly Kerst et al 54 Avoid (-)/control Yes Partly Lopes et al 55 Avoid (-)/control Yes No McHugh et al 52 Avoid (-)/control No No Fie...…”

Section: Eating Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Attentional bias modification based on visual probe task: methodological issues, results and clinical relevance

Lopes

Viacava

Bizarro

2015

Trends Psychiatry Psychother.

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Introduction: Attentional bias, the tendency that a person has to drive or maintain attention to a specific class of stimuli, may play an important role in the etiology and persistence of mental disorders. Attentional bias modification has been studied as a form of additional treatment related to automatic processing. Objectives: This systematic literature review compared and discussed methods, evidence of success and potential clinical applications of studies about attentional bias modification (ABM) using a visual probe task. Methods: The Web of Knowledge, PubMed and PsycInfo were searched using the keywords attentional bias modification, attentional bias manipulation and attentional bias training. We selected empirical studies about ABM training using a visual probe task written in English and published between 2002 and 2014. Results: Fifty-seven studies met inclusion criteria. Most (78%) succeeded in training attention in the predicted direction, and in 71% results were generalized to other measures correlated with the symptoms. Conclusions: ABM has potential clinical utility, but to standardize methods and maximize applicability, future studies should include clinical samples and be based on findings of studies about its effectiveness.

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Attentional retraining: A randomized clinical trial for pathological worry

Cited by 124 publications

References 24 publications

Attentional retraining can reduce chocolate consumption.

Attentional retraining can reduce chocolate consumption.

The modification of attentional bias to emotional information: A review of the techniques, mechanisms, and relevance to emotional disorders

Attentional bias modification based on visual probe task: methodological issues, results and clinical relevance

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