ORCID Profile
0000-0003-2801-4271
Current Organisation
University of Southampton
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Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 11-2014
DOI: 10.1016/J.BRAT.2014.07.020
Abstract: This study examined the efficacy of combining two promising approaches to treating children's specific phobias, namely attention training and one 3-h session of exposure therapy ('one-session treatment', OST). Attention training towards positive stimuli (ATP) and OST (ATP+OST) was expected to have more positive effects on implicit and explicit cognitive mechanisms and clinical outcome measures than an attention training control (ATC) condition plus OST (ATC+OST). Thirty-seven children (6-17 years) with a specific phobia were randomly assigned to ATP+OST or ATC+OST. In ATP+OST, children completed 160 trials of attention training responding to a probe that always followed the happy face in happy-angry face pairs. In ATC+OST, the probe appeared equally often after angry and happy faces. In the same session, children completed OST targeting their phobic situation/object. Clinical outcomes included clinician, parent and child report measures. Cognitive outcomes were assessed in terms of change in attention bias to happy and angry faces and in danger and coping expectancies. Assessments were completed before and after treatment and three-months later. Compared to ATC+OST, the ATP+OST condition produced (a) significantly greater reductions in children's danger expectancies about their feared situations/object during the OST and at three-month follow-up, and (b) significantly improved attention bias towards positive stimuli at post-treatment, which in turn, predicted a lower level of clinician-rated phobia diagnostic severity three-months after treatment. There were no significant differences between ATP+OST and ATC+OST conditions in clinician, parent, or child-rated clinical outcomes. Training children with phobias to focus on positive stimuli is effective in increasing attention towards positive stimuli and reducing danger expectancy biases. Studies with larger s le sizes and a stronger 'dose' of ATP prior to the OST may reveal promising outcomes on clinical measures for training attention towards positive stimuli.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 2000
DOI: 10.1017/S0033291799001269
Abstract: Background. In a number of theories of compulsive drug use conditioned responses to stimuli associated with drug taking play a pivotal role. For ex le, according to incentive-sensitization theory (Robinson & Berridge, 1993), drug-related stimuli selectively capture attention, and the neural mechanisms underlying this attentional bias play a key role in the development and maintenance of drug dependence, and in relapse. However, there has been little work that assesses attentional biases in addiction. Methods. We used a pictorial probe detection task to investigate whether there is an attentional bias to stimuli associated with drug use in opiate dependence. Stimuli presented included pairs of drug-related and matched neutral pictures. Methadone-maintained opiate addicts ( N = 16) were compared with age-matched controls ( N = 16). Results. A mixed design analysis of variance of response times to probes revealed a significant three-way interaction of group×drug picture location×probe location. Opiate addicts had relatively faster reaction times to probes that replaced drug pictures rather than neutral pictures, consistent with the predicted attentional bias to drug-related stimuli. Conclusions. These results support the idea that an attentional bias for drug-related stimuli occurs in opiate dependence. This is consistent with the concept of a central role for such salient stimuli in compulsive drug use.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 06-2010
DOI: 10.1016/J.JBTEP.2009.12.001
Abstract: To examine attentional bias towards angry and happy faces in 8-12 year old children with anxiety disorders (n=29) and non-anxious controls (n=24). Children completed a visual-probe task in which pairs of angry/neutral and happy/neutral faces were displayed for 500ms and were replaced by a visual probe in the spatial location of one of the faces. Children with more severe anxiety showed an attentional bias towards angry relative to neutral faces, compared with anxious children who had milder anxiety and non-anxious control children, both of whom did not show an attentional bias for angry faces. Unexpectedly, all groups showed an attentional bias towards happy faces relative to neutral ones. Anxiety symptom severity increases attention to threat stimuli in anxious children. This association may be due to differing threat appraisal processes or emotion regulation strategies.
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
No related grants have been discovered for Brendan Bradley.