Biased attention retraining in dysphoria: a failure to replicate

ABSTRACT

The present study replicated Wells and Beevers [(2010). Biased attention and dysphoria: Manipulating selective attention reduces subsequent depressive symptoms. Cognition & Emotion, 24, 719–728] and examined the longitudinal effects of attentional retraining on symptoms of depression. Dysphoric undergraduate psychology students were randomly assigned into either a neutral or control training condition. Training was administered using a dot-probe task that presented participants with pairs of pictures (of sad and neutral content) that were followed by a probe that participants had to respond to. Training took place over four sessions during a two-week period, followed by a final follow-up session two weeks later. Mood was measured at baseline, post-training, and at follow-up. All participants showed a significant reduction in depressive symptoms throughout the study, F(1.7, 73.55) = 21.19, p < .001; but the attentional retraining did not demonstrate any advantage over the control condition. Results were inconsistent with those of Wells and Beevers [(2010). Biased attention and dysphoria: Manipulating selective attention reduces subsequent depressive symptoms. Cognition & Emotion, 24, 719–728]. Implications of the findings on research on attentional retraining in the context of depression are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Depression
• information processing
• biased attention
• training

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.