Induced Biases in Emotional Interpretation Influence Stress Vulnerability and Endure Despite Changes in Context

The Plasticity of Adolescent Cognitions: Data from a Novel Cognitive Bias Modification Training Task

“…This is not particularly surprising taken in context of adult data: although instances of training effects on mood change have been found [56,57], others have reported no effects on mood [14,16,58,59] or mixed results [17,21,60]. Even when mood-change differences are present, it is not clear whether these manifest through changes in negative affect or positive affect.…”

“…After repeated exposure to these scenarios, participants receiving positive CBM-I are more likely to endorse positive interpretations of novel ambiguous scenarios than those receiving negative CBM-I, an effect that has been widely replicated in adults [11][12][13][14][15][16][17]. Moreover, induced negative interpretative styles are correlated with increases in state anxiety and reduction in positive affect [16,18], while induced positive interpretative styles are associated with attenuations of negative affect and improvements in positive affect [13]. Extending positive training to symptomatic samples (e.g.…”

How can we enhance cognitive bias modification techniques? The effects of prospective cognition

“…Participants were instructed to rate each sentence on how similar it was to the meaning of the original ambiguous description on a scale from 1 to 4 (1 = very different, 4 = very similar). The SRT has been widely used and known to be sensitive to detect interpretive bias in previous CBM studies (Lester et al, 2011;Mackintosh, Mathews, Yiend, Ridgeway, & Cook, 2006;Mathews & Mackintosh, 2000;Yiend, Lee, et al, 2014;Yiend, Mackintosh, & Mathews, 2005).…”

Interpretive habit is strengthened by cognitive bias modification

“…In the negative and benign conditions participants read 20 filler scenarios and 80 training scenarios, most of which were adapted from Mackintosh et al (2006). Each training scenario was identical in the negative and benign conditions and remained ambiguous until the final word.…”

“…In our design the main training phase typified CBM experiments (e.g., Mackintosh, Mathews, Yiend, Ridgeway, & Cook, 2006) but also included 16 additional scenarios at the end of training, half of which were resolved with a negative and half with a benign ending, regardless of the training condition. (We refer to these slightly different training phases as Training A and Training B, and schematise the design in Figure 1.)…”