The DOI matches its Crossref record; 49 of the 49 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Does attention bias modification improve attentional control? A double-blind randomized experiment with individuals with social anxiety disorder
Open accessAbstract
People with anxiety disorders often exhibit an attentional bias for threat. Attention bias modification (ABM) procedure may reduce this bias, thereby diminishing anxiety symptoms. In ABM, participants respond to probes that reliably follow non-threatening stimuli (e.g., neutral faces) such that their attention is directed away from concurrently presented threatening stimuli (e.g., disgust faces). Early studies showed that ABM reduced anxiety more than control procedures lacking any contingency between valenced stimuli and probes. However, recent work suggests that no-contingency training and training toward threat cues can be as effective as ABM in reducing anxiety, implying that any training may increase executive control over attention, thereby helping people inhibit their anxious thoughts. Extending this work, we randomly assigned participants with DSM-IV diagnosed social anxiety disorder to either training toward non-threat (ABM), training toward threat, or no-contingency condition, and we used the attention network task (ANT) to assess all three components of attention. After two training sessions, subjects in all three conditions exhibited indistinguishably significant declines from baseline to post-training in self-report and behavioral measures of anxiety on an impromptu speech task. Moreover, all groups exhibited similarly significant improvements on the alerting and executive (but not orienting) components of attention. Implications for ABM research are discussed.
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“This increased vigilance or defense typically characterizes SAD (Heeren et al, 2015) and PTSD (Cantor, 2009).”
From Oxytocin Facilitates Pavlovian Fear Learning in Males (2016) · cites this paper as Heeren et al, 2015
In the citing paper
“Moreover, other explanations for co-occurrence are rarely examined, such as whether ABM training modifies other processes (e.g., inhibitory attention control) which might underlie changes in anxiety and AB measures [80,81].”
From Anxiety and Threat-Related Attention: Cognitive-Motivational Framework and Treatment (2018) · cites this paper as [80]
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Self-citation
Metadata
- Authors
- Heeren, A., Mogoaşe, C., McNally, R. J., Schmitz, A., & Philippot, P.
- Affiliations
- UCLouvain (BE)
- Babeș-Bolyai University (RO)
- Harvard University (US)
- Venue
- Journal of Anxiety Disorders
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2015-01
- Volume
- 29
- Pages
- 35-42
- ISSN
- 0887-6185 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2085831037
- Cited by
- 134
- References
- 48
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 12 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 12 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 14 · 2019: 18 · 2018: 14 · 2017: 14 · 2016: 16 · 2015: 14
- FWCI
- 20.41
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- hdl.handle.net
- Licence
- Locations
- Journal of Anxiety Disorders (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Digital Access to Libraries (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Funders
- Belgian French Community
- Belgian National Funds
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Psychological Treatments and Assessments
- Keywords
- attentional bias modification, social anxiety disorder, attentional control, executive function, alerting, orienting, threat cues, anxiety reduction, Attention Network Task
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Anxiety, Attention, Cues, Discrimination, Psychological, Double-Blind Method, Female, Humans, Male, Phobic Disorders, Thinking, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Executive Function, Self Report
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