Cognitive bias modification paradigms training positive mental imagery and interpretation (imagery CBM-I) hold promise for treatment innovation in depression. However, depression is a global health problem and interventions need to translate across settings and cultures. The current pilot study investigated the impact of 1 week of daily imagery CBM-I in treatment-seeking individuals with major depression in outpatient psychiatry clinics in Iran. Further, it tested the importance of instructions to imagine the positive training materials. Finally, we examined the effects of this training on imagery vividness. Thirty-nine participants were randomly allocated to imagery CBM-I, a non-imagery control program, or a no treatment control group. Imagery CBM-I led to greater improvements in depressive symptoms, interpretive bias, and imagery vividness than either control condition at post-treatment (n = 13 per group), and improvements were maintained at 2-week follow-up (n = 8 per group). This pilot study provides first preliminary evidence that imagery CBM-I could provide positive clinical outcomes in an Iranian psychiatric setting, and further that the imagery component of the training may play a crucial role.

Test anxiety is a serious problem for many college students. This study examines the development and validation of the Online Test Anxiety Inventory (OTAI) to evaluate test anxiety among online students. In this study, the OTAI is developed and administered to a sample of 157 postgraduate online students: 77 males and 80 females, aged 22 to 51 years. To design the initial version of the 38-item, Sarason’s Test Anxiety Scale, Abolghsemi’s Test Anxiety Inventory (TAI) and Spielberger’s Test Anxiety Scale were studied, and many interviews were conducted with online learning students who had a high level of test anxiety. Confirmatory Factor Analysis was employed to obtain the Goodness of Fit Indices of the model to the data. The final result is a multidimensional, 18-item OTAI comprised of three factors— online, psychological, and physiological—with a high internal consistency (α = 0.91) and acceptable criterion validity. Concurrent validity was measured by the association of the OTAI and the TAI (r = 0.83).

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Objectives: This study was carried with the purpose of evaluating the effectiveness of self-regulation strategy training on procrastination, academic achievement, and happiness of 1st grade high school male and female students. Methods: It is a quasi-experimental research with a pretest-posttest design involving a control group. Sixty students were selected by means of multistage cluster sampling plan and randomly grouped in 4 groups of 15. Research instrument consisted of Solomon and Rothblum Academic Delay, Oxford Happiness, and Standard Academic Achievement Questionnaire. Test group received 8 self-regulation training sessions of 45-minute duration each. Results: Results revealed that self-regulation training has a meaningful effect on dependent variables (P < 0.001). In the presented model, "gender", "time and group", "interactive effect of gender and group", and "interactive effect of group and time" were meaningful, as opposed to the "interactive effect of gender and time" and "interactive effect of gender, group, and time" which lacked any significance. Conclusions: Results of LSD post hoc test showed no meaningful difference between the mean happiness, procrastination, and academic achievement scores of experimental and control groups in the pretest stage. However, in the posttest and follow-up stage, the mean scores of the two groups differed significantly.