Elsevier

Behavior Therapy

Volume 41, Issue 1, March 2010, Pages 73-81
Behavior Therapy

Cognitive Bias Modification: The Critical Role of Active Training in Modifying Emotional Responses

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beth.2009.01.002Get rights and content

Abstract

Training participants to select threat or nonthreat interpretations of emotionally ambiguous stimuli or passively exposing them to valenced scenarios can modify later interpretation of ambiguity. However, only when encouraged to actively select meanings do congruent changes in emotional response occur during training itself (Mathews & Mackintosh, 2000). The present study assessed the more critical question of whether active training is also necessary for modifying subsequent emotional responses to images of new ambiguous scenarios presented after training. As predicted, active training did lead participants to rate their images of emotionally ambiguous scenarios as being more unpleasant after training as compared to a matched passive condition. This finding supports the view that active generation of meaning during interpretive training is critical for the modification of later 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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