Anxiety-linked attentional bias: backward glances and future glimpses

ABSTRACT

This brief reflection considers some of the important developments in anxiety-linked attentional bias research that have marked the three decades since the launch of Cognition and Emotion, and also identifies several challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. I suggest that the steady increase in our capacity to distinguish differing facets of attentional bias and alternative dimensions of anxiety vulnerability, together with the advent of attentional bias modification techniques that can illuminate causality, has enriched theoretical understanding and created the exciting potential for clinical translation. In order to fully capitalise on this potential, I propose that researchers should address the challenge of enhancing the psychometric properties of our assessment measures, and developing training procedures that not only modify attentional bias more effectively, but that motivate sustained patient engagement. I end with some personal advice to young investigators developing their research careers within this stimulating and rewarding field of scientific inquiry.     

Exploring a Training IRAP as a single participant context for analyzing reversed derived relations and persistent rule-following

Rule-governed behavior and derived stimulus relations have always shared strong conceptual links within behavior analysis. However, experimental analysis linking the two domains remains limited. The current study consisted of three experiments that aimed to continue to bridge this experimental gap. The first experiment sought to establish the extent to which a training version of the implicit relational assessment procedure (IRAP) could be used to establish and successfully reverse experimentally established derived relations. The results suggested that the Training IRAP could successfully produce derived reversals. Experiments 2 and 3 explored the extent to which reversed derived relations would control rule-governed behavior when the contingencies for rule-following competed with the rule. In Experiment 2, the task contingencies were immediately in opposition to the (reversed) derived rule, and participants generally responded in accordance with the task contingencies, rather than the rule. In Experiment 3, the task contingencies were initially rule-consistent before a contingency reversal that later made them rule-inconsistent. Here evidence of rule-persistence emerged. The results of the research are considered within the context of a recent framework that has emerged out of RFT for analyzing the dynamics involved in derived relational responding.