Positive Attention Bias Trained during the Rethink Therapeutic Online Game and Related Improvements in Children and Adolescents’ Mental Health

Abstract

Attentional bias towards positive stimuli is considered a resilience factor for mental health and well-being. The aim of the present study was to analyze the effects of an attentional bias training for positive faces in a preventive therapeutic game for children and adolescents. The sample of 54, which consisted of children and adolescents aged between 10–16 years, played the REThink game, which included an attentional bias training level based on the visual search paradigm, where children had the task to quickly find the happy face among other angry faces. We measured mental health, and positive and negative emotions and analyzed their associations between changes in attention bias. Attentional bias indicators demonstrated acceptable reliability and results showed that increases in attentional bias towards positive faces were associated with improvements in children and adolescents’ conduct problems, hyperactivity, and peer relationship problems. Overall, our results support the protective role of training attentional bias towards positive faces as part of a preventive therapeutic game for children and adolescents.

Preventing mental illness in children that experienced maltreatment the efficacy of REThink online therapeutic game

“…The game is promising, given the findings of the studies investigating its efficacy and effectiveness [7][8][9][10][11][12] and it follows recommendations from current literature 20 . It is unique, given that there is a limited percentage of preventive games and that the game has a validated gamified assessment system 21 .…”

“…The present research therefore aimed to test if the REThink therapeutic game is effective as a standalone intervention for improving the mental health and emotion-regulation abilities for children and adolescents that experienced CM. We hypothesized that the participants in the REThink therapeutic game will report similar robust improvements in these outcomes to those documented in the previous trials [7][8][9][10][11][12] , relative to the control condition after the intervention. Based on previous findings on moderators for the treatment efficacy showing that CM is associated with poor treatment outcomes 13 , we expected that improvements in the outcomes for the REThink intervention will be lower for the youths presenting with higher severity of CM, or with additional risk factors such as insecure parent attachment.…”

“…The REThink game intervention was based on a protocol and its delivery was supervised by an experienced psychologist trained in CBT (first author). The contents of the intervention are briefly presented below, and additional details can be found in other published trials [7][8][9][10][11][12] .…”

Preliminary Evaluation of a Single Brief Session of a Novel Gamified Attentional Bias Modification for Improving Children’s Happiness: Randomized Controlled Trails (Preprint)

“…Previous studies testified to the effectiveness of gamified attentional bias modification mobile apps in reducing emotional symptoms in children and adolescents. The ReThink game was developed based on the ABM-positive-search, which is a gamified ABM designed to train attention toward positive faces (David & Magurean, 2022). A study tested the effect of the ReThink game on attentional biases and mental health in children and adolescents between 10-16 years (David & Magurean, 2022).…”

“…The ReThink game was developed based on the ABM-positive-search, which is a gamified ABM designed to train attention toward positive faces (David & Magurean, 2022). A study tested the effect of the ReThink game on attentional biases and mental health in children and adolescents between 10-16 years (David & Magurean, 2022). The study showed that the game significantly increased children's attention to positive stimuli (David & Magurean, 2022).…”