Journal of behavior therapy and experimental psychiatry
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J Behav Ther Exp Psychiatry · Mar 2019
The effects of attentional bias modification on emotion regulation.
In two experiments, we investigated the effects of Attentional Bias Modification (ABM) on emotion regulation, i.e. the manner in which people influence emotional experiences. We hypothesized that decreases in attentional bias to threat would impair upregulation and improve downregulation of negative emotions, while increases in attentional bias to threat would improve upregulation and impair downregulation of negative emotions. ⋯ By showing that attentional bias modification procedures affect the manner in which people deal with emotions, we add empirical weight to the conceptual overlap between attentional bias modification and emotion regulation.