Trial reportDevelopmental cognitive neuroscience2013
Attention training towards positive stimuli in clinically anxious children.
Trial report in Developmental cognitive neuroscience, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 48 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
48 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 137 citations in OpenAlex.
- Technology Delivered Interventions for Depression and Anxiety in Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.Clinical child and family psychology review · 2019Pooled it
- Pooled patient-level meta-analysis of children and adults completing a computer-based anxiety intervention targeting attentional bias.Clinical psychology review · 2016Pooled it
- Brief, Non-Pharmacological, Interventions for Pediatric Anxiety: Meta-Analysis and Evidence Base Status.Journal of clinical child and adolescent psychology : the official journal for the Society of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, American Psychological Association, Division 53Pooled it
- A School-Based Comparison of Positive Search Training to Enhance Adaptive Attention Regulation with a Cognitive-Behavioural Intervention for Reducing Anxiety Symptoms in Children.Journal of abnormal child psychology · 2019Trial
- Age Moderates Link Between Training Effects and Treatment Response to Attention Bias Modification Treatment for Social Anxiety Disorder.Journal of abnormal child psychology · 2019Trial
- Efficacy of Attention Bias Training for Child Anxiety Disorders: A Randomized Controlled Trial.Child psychiatry and human development · 2019Trial
- Group Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Attention Bias Modification for Childhood Anxiety Disorders: A Factorial Randomized Trial of Efficacy.Journal of child and adolescent psychopharmacology · 2018Trial
- Randomized placebo-controlled D-cycloserine with cognitive behavior therapy for pediatric posttraumatic stress.Journal of child and adolescent psychopharmacology · 2014Trial
- Attention bias modification treatment augmenting effects on cognitive behavioral therapy in children with anxiety: randomized controlled trial.Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry · 2014Trial
- Training-associated changes and stability of attention bias in youth: Implications for Attention Bias Modification Treatment for pediatric anxiety.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2013Trial
- Brief Repeated Attention Training for Psychological Distress: Findings from Two Experiments.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Combining Unguided Web-Based Attentional Bias Modification and Affective Working Memory Training to Decrease Anxiety: A Randomized Controlled Trial.Cognitive therapy and research · 2025Article
- An Expanded Conceptual Framework for Understanding Irritability in Childhood: The Role of Cognitive Control Processes.Clinical child and family psychology review · 2024Review
- Attention Training for Child Anxiety and Its Disorders: Moving from Research to Clinical Implementation.Clinical child and family psychology review · 2024Review
- Effect of facial emotion recognition learning transfers across emotions.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Does irritability predict attention biases toward threat among clinically anxious youth?European child & adolescent psychiatry · 2023Article
- Role of stimulus types and valence on the affective memory performance of adults with anxiety.Heliyon · 2022Article
- Positive Attention Bias Trained during the Rethink Therapeutic Online Game and Related Improvements in Children and Adolescents' Mental Health.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Efficacy of attention bias modification via smartphones in a large population sample.Royal Society open science · 2022Article
- The role of attention control in complex real-world tasks.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
objectiveAttention bias modification training (ABMT) is a promising treatment. Nevertheless, few studies examine its effectiveness in anxious children. This study examined the efficacy of such an ABMT protocol in pediatric anxiety.
method37 anxious children were randomly assigned to one of two ABMT conditions. In the attention-towards-positive (ATP) condition, children searched 3×3 matrices for a happy face amongst angry faces. In the attention-training-control (ATC) condition, they searched for a bird amongst flowers. Children completed 160 trials in each of four training sessions per week for three weeks at home (1920 total trials). Clinical and attention bias measures were assessed before and after ABMT.
resultsChildren randomized to ATP showed greater post-training attention bias towards happy faces than children randomized to ATC. ATP also produced significantly greater reductions in clinician-rated diagnostic severity and number of diagnoses, compared to ATC. In the ATP group, 50% of children who completed training did not meet criteria for their principal diagnosis, compared to 8% in the ATC group.
conclusionTraining anxious children to focus attention on positive features of their environment may be a promising treatment.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.