Attentional retraining

However, in more recent research and clinical applications attentional retraining has also been applied as a type of cognitive bias modification.

The increased availability of personal computers and accessible programming languages allowed for researchers and clinicians to begin experimenting with computerized cognitive training.

In one such task participants must sit and observe on screen randomly presented numbers and push a buzzer when they see a specific digit – say, 3.

In this most recent meta-analysis of outcomes the authors found that there were significant and large effect sizes (d statistic) from pre-training to post-training.

[17] According to a recent meta-analysis focusing on the clinical impact of Attention bias Modification (ABM) for alleviating Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD),[18] ABM produces a small but significant reduction in SAD symptoms (g = 0.27), reactivity to speech challenge (g = 0.46), and attentional bias for threat (g = 0.30).

Although there was no indication of significant publication bias, the authors identified that quality of the studies was substandard and wedged the effect sizes.

From a clinical point of view, these findings imply that ABM is not yet ready for wide-scale dissemination as a treatment for SAD in routine care.

[21] Accordingly, a recent study[22] demonstrated that attentional bias for threat among individuals with anxiety disorders may be reduced via the application of neuromodulation techniques, such as transcranial direct-current stimulation over the dorsolateral part of the left prefrontal cortex.

Two large scale recent studies have shown that CBM training with an approach/avoid task in alcohol dependent individuals can reduce relapse rates at one year up to 10%.