Integrating cognitive bias modification into a standard cognitive behavioural treatment package for social phobia: A randomized controlled trial
Highlights
► Treatment for social phobia was successful through a comprehensive cognitive behavioural package of 12 sessions. ► Attentional bias modification integrated into the homework component of treatment failed to change attentional biases. ► Attentional bias modification conducted in this way also failed to increase the efficacy of the basic treatment package.
Section snippets
Participants
Participants for the study were 134 individuals meeting Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 4th edition (DSM-IV: American Psychiatric Association, 2000) criteria for social anxiety disorder who were randomly allocated to either an attention bias modification procedure (ABMP) or placebo training (PT). A planned sample size (N = 128) was determined to allow a minimum difference of 0.5 standard deviation units to be detected at an alpha of 0.05 with 80% power (Faul, Erdfelder,
Descriptive data
Descriptive data on the sample across the two groups are presented in Table 1. As can be seen from the table, the groups differed significantly on two demographic features: the ABMP group contained more males and more participants with avoidant personality disorder.
Training sessions completed and impact on attentional bias
The number of attention training task sessions completed at home across the entire sample over the 12 weeks ranged from 0 to 79, with a median of 39. The two groups did not differ significantly in their mean number of attention
Discussion
Cognitive bias modification procedures have begun to show some promising effects in reducing symptomatology across a range of anxiety disorders, including social anxiety disorder (Hallion & Ruscio, 2011). To date, these experimental techniques have not been combined with standard cognitive behavioural treatment programs for anxiety. The current study represents the first attempt at such integration. According to the current results the incorporation of a home-based probe task attention bias
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