Ceschi, Grazia
[Université de Genève]
Heeren, Alexandre
[UCL]
Prominent cognitive theories propose that attention biases play a central causal role in the onset and maintenance of emotional disorders (i.e., Beck, 1976). With the development of a procedure to experimentally manipulate selective attention (Attention Bias Modification; ABM; MacLeod et al., 2002), this causal status has been established empirically. Over the last 10 years, 35 studies on ABM have supported the view that attention biases contribute to emotional vulnerability and cannot be considered a mere by-product of emotional disorders. The ABM is designed to experimentally modify attention biases through repeated practice of computerized cognitive tasks. Many research groups show that the ABM procedure effectively modifies attention biases within not more than a single session of about 20 minutes. This change eventually leads to a congruent variation of emotional vulnerability. Clinically relevant, multisession ABM intervention can reduce emotional symptoms, with an effect size comparable to existent validated treatments of general anxiety, social phobia, depression, or alcohol abuse. Interestingly, the benefits of ABM prove to be stable for at least 4 months. The value of ABM was recognized in a recent article in The Economist (Mar 3rd 2011, Therapist-free therapy: Cognitive-bias modification may put the psychiatrist's couch out of business). Despite very promising prospects, one must keep in mind that ABM is still a developing field needing further research. Our interest is to apply ABM to attention biases for body images, and to assess the impact of these biases modifications across symptoms like body dissatisfaction, and eating disorders. We postulate that selective attention for unattractive body attributes can play a causal role in the development of body dissatisfaction. Changing the way one looks at body images may help to improve body satisfaction and, ultimately, to reduce risk factors of women ubiquitous disorders.


Bibliographic reference |
Ceschi, Grazia ; Heeren, Alexandre. Always look on the brigth side of life? The attention bias modification.Invited conference at the Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, CISA (University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland, du 31/01/2012 au 31/01/2012). |
Permanent URL |
http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/111608 |