Cognitive Bias Modification: The Critical Role of Active Training in Modifying Emotional Responses
Section snippets
Design Overview
Participants were randomly allocated to either an active threat or passive threat training condition. They were first presented with 10 emotionally ambiguous scenarios and asked to form an image of themselves in each situation. After each image, they were asked to make ratings of the emotionality and vividness of their images. Following CBM-I training, participants were given a short filler task (to equate anxiety levels) followed by 10 new emotionally ambiguous scenarios and were required to
Participant Characteristics
There were no significant differences between training groups in age (M = 38.00, SD = 17.90 in the active group; M = 33.21, SD = 15.71 in the passive group), t(26) = 0.75, p = .46; trait anxiety (M = 32.71, SD = 7.58 in the active group; M = 32.21, SD = 5.18 in the passive group), t(22.96) = 0.20, p = .84; or state anxiety at the start of the experiment, t(26) = -0.37, p = .71 (see Table 1 for means). In terms of gender, in the active threat condition there were 4 males and 10 females; in the passive threat condition
Discussion
The main finding of the present study was that, as predicted, an active method of interpretive training, in which participants had to generate and/or select threatening meanings of ambiguous event descriptions, increased subsequent self-rated emotionality of images of new emotionally ambiguous descriptions in a training-congruent direction. In contrast, a passive method, in which participants were provided with identical valenced information but did not have to generate or select emotional
Acknowledgements
This research was funded by a Medical Research Council Studentship to the first author.
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