Attentuation of depressogenic attributional style through cognitive bias modification
Description
A series of studies were conducted to determine whether computer-based Cognitive Bias Modification (CBM) procedures could modify attributional style. The first four experiments examined the effects of CBM procedures in an unselected population. The results from Experiments 1 and 3 indicate that CBM procedures can modify causal attributions. Moreover, changes in causal attributions were associated with congruent changes in emotional resilience to stress. That is, participants offered repeated exposure to and practice in generating a positive attributional style demonstrated improvements in causal attributions and stress resilience. Similar improvements in mood state also were found in Experiment 2, though these changes were seen in the absence of significant changes in attributions. The goal of Experiment 4a was to further augment CBM effects by including only one emotional valence of events in the CBM task to disentangle the decision rule. A secondary aim was to objectively assess CBM-induced changes in attributional style by including probe trials within the CBM task. The results of this experiment provided little evidence that attributional style was modified, although the reasons for this finding were inconclusive. Therefore, a follow-up experiment, Experiment 4b, was conducted to examine the effects of repeated exposure to a single valence within the CBM task, while excluding the probe trials. The results of this experiment indicated that inclusion of the probe trials in Experiment 4a inhibited acquisition of the decision rule, rendering the CBM procedures ineffectual. Moreover, the results from Experiment 4b suggested that simplifying the decision rule did not significantly change the effects of the CBM procedures. The final experiment in this series was designed to investigate the utility of CBM procedures to improve attributional style in mildly depressed individuals. The results of this experiment indicated that CBM procedures did not significantly improve causal attributions, although this may be attributed to the validity of the assessment tool. Overall, this series of experiments offers evidence supporting the causal role of depressogenic attributions in depressed mood state. Moreover, these results suggest that attributional style is not invariable, and improvements in this cognitive bias may lead to improvements in mood and emotional resilience to stress