Brief Repeated Attention Training for Psychological Distress: Findings from Two Experiments

Abstract

Psychological distress is understood to be maintained by attention. We performed two experiments examining the impact of attention training (AT) on psychological distress symptoms. Experiment one (N = 336) investigated what effects might be detected in a simple experimental design with longitudinal measurements, while experiment two (N = 214) examined whether using a different emotional stimulus could induce an immediate anxiolytic effect in response to AT. Attentional biases were operationalized as the target search latency correlated with mood and psychological distress scores. While limited evidence of attentional biases was found in participants with higher mood distress, correlations emerged in the experimental conditions at day thirty, indicating a relationship between task latency, stress, and changes in depression (experimental one). We found no immediate between-within-group differences in outcome when including different emotional stimuli (experiment two). Despite attentional biases being less apparent in community samples, attentional training for bias modification was effective in eliciting positive biases, leading to improved mood. Notably, participants in the control condition reported the greatest mood and psychological distress improvements, whereas changes in the experimental condition primarily pertained to attentional biases. Taken together, these findings suggest that AT tasks can improve distress, but not through changes in attentional biases.

Keywords: attention; bias modification; mood dysfunction; psychological distress; remote interventions.

Figure 1

Experiment one outcomes. Left to right: DASS Depression, DASS Anxiety, DASS Stress, IMI Total, IMI Depression, and IMI anxiety.

Figure 2

ANCOVA of each IMI index score post-intervention, adjusted for baseline values.