Attentional Bias to Worry

Hirsch, MacLeod, Mathews, Sandheer, Siyani, and, Hayes (2011) investigated worry in participants with an attentional bias modification method in order to find an effect on group differences in participants on selective attention to meanings of threat. The participants that performed the attention induction process which was invented in order to make decrease the processing of the meanings of threats were slowere in the processing of semantic aspects of the word that were disigned as threat words as compared to as compared to words that exhibited no threat content comparing the subjects that were said to increase threat processing.

The findings showed that this effect was the same in case of the bias induction process that consisted as training that had its target for biasing attentional engagement with, or bias that did disengage from threat meanings. These concepts were effective in the same manner in the induction of altered selective attention meanings to threats, had altered effects on the following patters of worry. In case the attentional bias that was induced did encourage selective attention with the meanings of the threat, the multitude of thought intrusions that were negative on the task assessing worry was larger as compared to the process that was made for discouraging selective engagement with the meanings of the threats.

Performance accuracy on the task was similar in all participants, so these findings are not associated with it. However, the findings suggest that it is indicative that a variability in selective attentional engagement related to treat, but not the variability in attentional disengagement to threats, did have a causal impact on negative thought intrusions which is indicative of worry.

It is further argued that a bias in attentional engagement with threat has an effect on processes to worry, for instance, by the affect of the amount in which selective attention is associated to these negative situational circumstances of the situation that might result in triggering thoughts of negativity (Hirsch et al., 2011).