The Effectiveness of Cognitive Bias Modification on Increasing Positive Cognitive Biases and Reducing Social Anxiety

As the prevalence and impact of social anxiety disorder continues to adversely affect both individuals and society, treatments such as cognitive behavioural therapy and pharmaceuticals are more heavily depended on than ever. However, due to the costs and inaccessibility plaguing both methods, new treatments within the last decade have been introduced as alternatives, including cognitive bias modification (CBM). The current research was comprised of two studies. The first tested for a valid single session CBM-interpretation technique by administering a single session to high versus low anxiety and training versus control groups to establish an effective version of the more promising interpretation based CBM intervention, that was then used in study two. In study two, CBM-attention, CBM-interpretation, and a control task were administered digitally to groups of high versus low anxiety participants to test whether single session CBM could effectively reduce cognitive biases and anxiety symptoms, and, whether an interpretation oriented CBM model was more effective in reducing anxiety compared to an attention orientated model. The results of study one showed CBM-interpretation produced marginally more positive interpretation bias and lower anxiety compared to a control group, however, the effect was not significant. In study two, the results revealed no significant effect of CBM on promoting positive cognitive biases or reducing anxiety when compared to a control group, although, the fact that there was no significant difference between high and low trait anxiety groups in levels of state anxiety suggests some successful anxiety reduction training may have occurred