Background and objectives

Attachment theory suggests that internal working models developed from early experiences with attachment figures biases cognitive appraisals a person makes of themselves and others. The current paper investigates whether attachment-related interpretative biases can be altered using Cognitive Bias Modification (CBM-I).

Methods

Eighty anxiously attached participants were randomly assigned to receive either secure or insecure CBM-I training. To measure training effects on attachment-related interpretation bias, participants read scenarios involving attachment figures whereby the availability of the attachment figure was undetermined, followed by test sentences that assigned an attachment-secure or -insecure interpretation to the situations. Participants rated the similarity of these sentences to the previously read ambiguous situations.

Results

Participants who received secure CBM-I training ascribed higher similarity ratings to secure sentence interpretations of ambiguous scenarios compared to insecure sentence interpretations. Attachment anxiety increased after CBM-I training for those who received insecure training, but did not differ for those who received secure training.

Limitations

This study was limited to healthy participants and did not include clinical participants. These findings need to be replicated by assessing the effects of CBM-I over an extended period.

Conclusions

CBM-I training may provide a viable means of modulating attachment anxiety. If validated with more potent strategies for secure attachment training, this approach could have significant implications for the treatment of affective disorders characterized by insecure attachments.

中文翻译：

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通过认知偏差修正来修正不安全的依恋风格

背景和目标

依恋理论表明，根据依恋对象的早期经验发展起来的内部工作模型会偏向一个人对自己和他人的认知评估。目前的论文调查了是否可以使用认知偏差修正 (CBM-I) 来改变与依恋相关的解释偏差。

方法

80 名焦虑的参与者被随机分配接受安全或不安全的 CBM-I 培训。为了衡量训练对依恋相关解释偏差的影响，参与者阅读涉及依恋人物的场景，其中依恋人物的可用性是不确定的，然后是测试句子，为情境分配依恋安全或不安全的解释。参与者对这些句子与先前阅读的模棱两可情况的相似性进行了评分。

结果

与不安全的句子解释相比，接受安全 CBM-I 培训的参与者将更高的相似性评级归因于对模糊场景的安全句子解释。接受不安全训练的人在 CBM-I 训练后依恋焦虑增加，但接受安全训练的人没有差异。

限制

这项研究仅限于健康参与者，不包括临床参与者。这些发现需要通过长期评估 CBM-I 的影响来复制。

结论

CBM-I 培训可能提供一种调节依恋焦虑的可行方法。如果用更有效的安全依恋训练策略进行验证，这种方法可能会对以不安全依恋为特征的情感障碍的治疗产生重大影响。