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Category: Project

Description: Attentional Bias Modification (ABM) paradigms aim to reduce attentional biases for threatening stimuli and thereby reduce anxiety. However, previous studies that investigated the effectiveness of ABM targeting anxiety have observed mixed results as some studies have observed that ABM procedures do not always elicit bias change (for a review, see Mogg, Waters, & Bradley, 2017). In order to explain the discrepancy in findings, an important future avenue for ABM research is to investigate under which conditions ABM is most effective in eliciting bias change. One potential moderating factor of ABM’s training effectiveness is the level of state anxiety during training since an attentional bias for threat is suggested to be more pronounced under elevated levels of state anxiety (e.g., Mansell et al., 1999). This study aimed to investigate whether elevated levels of state anxiety would increase ABM-induced differences in attentional bias. We randomly assigned mid-socially anxious students to a single session of a dot-probe training in which participants were trained towards either angry faces (attend-angry training) or happy faces (avoid-angry training). In addition, participants were randomized to receive either an anxiety or control induction prior to each training block in order to induce differences in state anxiety. After completing one session of training, attentional bias was assessed by means of a dot-probe task and a visual search task.