Neutral attention training, attention control, and anxiety

Includes bibliographical references (p. 24-27)Anxious individuals preferentially attend to threat-relevant information in their environment. Furthermore, it may be possible to train attentional bias. Moreover, experimentally decreasing or increasing attentional bias for threat appears to decrease anxiety following stressful tasks. Given that anxiety is characterized by poor attentional control, one possible explanation for these findings may be that attention training programs target more general attention control processes. The primary goal of the current study was to test whether an attentional training paradigm using emotionally neutral stimuli would be effective in modifying attentional bias, improving general attention control, and would be effective in mitigating anxiety following a social stressor. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two probe detection conditions (i.e., active training versus control). Results revealed that participants who received active attention training developed a relative bias in the anticipated direction, but only for trials low in perceptual load. Additionally, these participants demonstrated significantly more improvement on an independent assessment of attention control than did participants in the control condition. Groups did not differ in self-reported anxiety or performance quality following the stressor. Results suggest that attention training programs promote attention control. Results are consistent with the account that emotional versions of the attention training task may improve attention control in the context of threa