Positive Attentional Bias Training in Eating Disorders
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Positive Attentional Bias Training in Eating Disorders
IRAS ID
154645
Contact name
Amy Harrison
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Ellern Mede Centre for Eating Disorders
Research summary
People with Eating Disorders (EDs) have socio-emotional difficulties. In particular, they show a bias towards negative information about the self and others’ attitudes. Previous studies have found an attentional bias towards critical and angry faces, and lower implicit self-esteem and self-compassion in EDs than healthy subjects. The proposed project is aimed at testing the acceptability and impact on clinical symptoms, interpersonal functioning (between self and others), and self-evaluation of computerized training programme to modify negative cognitive bias to social and self-relevant stimuli in patients with EDs. Participants will meet the researcher 4 times, on 4 different days, over the course of 7-10 days. During the first day (baseline; 60 min.), participants will complete a set of questionnaires assessing clinical symptoms, implicit and explicit self-esteem, interpersonal functioning, vigilance to social stimuli and interpretation of social situations. Then, participants will be assigned to either a training, experimental condition or a control condition of the cognitive bias modification module. The experimental condition entails receiving computerized training (training session 1 - day 2; training session 2 – day 3; training session 3 - day 4) to develop a positive bias towards others (module 1) and self-related positive information (module 2). Participants in the control condition receive a different version of the training, where both positive and negative information are presented. At the end of the last training session (day 4), all participants will complete follow-up measures of clinical symptoms, implicit and explicit self-esteem, interpersonal functioning, vigilance to social stimuli and interpretation of social situations (45 min). Participants in the control group will be offered the intervention at this stage.
REC name
East Midlands - Leicester Central Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
14/EM/1142
Date of REC Opinion
15 Sep 2014
REC opinion
Unfavourable Opinion