Facilitating a benign attentional bias reduces negative thought intrusions.
The causal role of biased attention in worry was investigated in an experiment in which high worriers were assigned either to a condition requiring attention to nonthreatening words and text while ignoring worry-related material or to a mixed-attention control condition. The former procedure led to fewer negative thought intrusions in a worry test (as rated by both participants and an assessor) than did the control condition. These findings suggest that attentional bias plays a causal role in worry and that its modification can reduce excessive worry.
Department of Psychology, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, London, England. sarra.hayes@kcl.ac.uk
Sarra
S
Hayes
Colette R
CR
Hirsch
Andrew
A
Mathews
D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D001008:Anxiety Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology*; D001288:Attention; D003071:Cognition; D004007:Dichotic Listening Tests; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013663:Teaching / Q000379:methods; D013850:Thinking; D014825:Vocabulary