A Single-Session Online Cognitive Bias Modification of Interpretations Modified for Adults With Anxiety and Depressive Symptoms

Anxiety and depression are common, co-occurring, and costly mental health disorders. Cognitive bias modification aims to modify biases to reduce associated symptoms. Few studies have targeted multiple biases associated with both anxiety and depression, and those that have lacked a con-trol condition. This study piloted a single-session online cognitive bias modification (known as CBM-IA) designed to target two biases associated with anxiety and depression-interpretation bias and attribution style-in adults with varying levels of anxiety and depressive symp-toms. Participants (18-26 years) with at least mild levels of anxiety/stress and depressive symptoms on the DASS-21 were randomly allocated to an intervention (n = 23) or a control (n = 22) condition. The training consisted of a single-session online CBM-IA to encourage positive inter-pretations and a positive attribution style. Interpretation bias, attribution style, anxious and depres-sive mood states, and anxiety, stress and depressive symp-toms improved at posttraining and at follow-up, irrespective of condition. Changes in interpretation bias from pre-to posttraining were significantly associated with changes in anxious mood state. CBM-IA, as implemented in this single-session pilot study, did not significantly reduce targeted biases and symptoms compared to a con-trol condition. This adds to the mixed evidence on the effi-cacy of single-session CBM-I for altering biases and symptoms.