Too Much of a Good Thing: Testing the Efficacy of a Cognitive Bias Modification Task for Cognitively Vulnerable Individuals

A growing body of research indicates that cognitive bias modification (CBM) may be an effective intervention for individuals
with anxiety. However, few studies have tested whether CBM works for other disorders characterized by negative cognitive biases
such as depression. This experiment tested the efficacy of CBM for altering depressogenic self-worth biases. Consistent with
hypotheses, results showed that CBM was more effective than a control condition in teaching participants a more adaptive cognitive
style (i.e., increased attention for adaptive self-worth stimuli). Those who successfully learned a more adaptive style reported
fewer depressive symptoms and exhibited greater persistence (i.e., less helplessness) on a difficult laboratory task. However,
the task proved difficult for cognitively vulnerable participants; they were not able to maintain their new learning over
the entire course of the CBM training. Rather, their negative cognitive bias began to re-emerge after only 20 learning trials.
These results indicate that CBM attention training might be most effective in reducing cognitive vulnerability when initially
used in small doses.