The effect of attention training on a behavioral test of contamination fears in individuals with subclinical obsessive-compulsive symptoms

Abstract

In the current study, we evaluated the effectiveness of attention training in individuals with subclinical obsessive-compulsive symptoms. We hypothesized that after completing attention training, participants would be more likely to complete steps in a hierarchy approaching their feared contaminant compared with participants in the control condition. Participants completed a probe detection task by identifying letters replacing one member of a pair of words (neutral or contamination related). We trained attention by building a contingency between the location of the contamination-related word in the active condition and not in the control condition. Participants in the active group showed a significant reduction in attention bias for threat and completed significantly more steps when approaching their feared objects compared with participants in the control group. Our results suggest that attention disengagement training may facilitate approaching feared objects in individuals with obsessive-compulsive symptoms.

Figures

Figure 1

Attention Bias score on the probe detection task by Group and Time