An Experimental Study On Improvement Of High Trait Anxiety Individual’s Anxiety Level By Attention Bias Modification Program

Objective: In order to prove that the attention bias modification can not onlyadjust the negative attention bias of high trait anxiety individuals, and also affect theparticipants’ levels of anxiety under the stress state. This study tries to use an attentionbias modification program with a purpose, induce attention bias to different nature ofthe information in high trait anxiety individuals.Methods: By using the Trait Anxiety Inventory of The State Trait AnxietyInventory, the study filtered out the high trait anxiety individuals as experimentalsubjects, choosed the emotional face pictures as experimental material. The studycontained a3（group: negative condition, neutral condition, control condition）×2（testing time: test before attention bias modifying, test after attention biasmodifying）×2（the effectiveness of clues: valid clues, invalid clues）×2（face type:angry, neutral） mixed experimental design, making differential attention biasmodifying to three groups of participants separately,Results：（1）Before attention bias modifying, participants’ reaction time to angryface clues of three groups was significantly longer than to neutral face clues.（2）After attention bias modification, the neutral group’ reaction time to twoface clues has no difference, while the negative group and control group’s responsesto two face clues still have significant differences.（3）After attention bias training, the neutral group’s attention bias index wassignificantly lower than negative group and control group, while there is no differencebetween negative group and control group under the condition of valid clues.（4）After attention bias modification, the neutral group’ anxiety level wassignificantly lower than attention bias modification before under the stress state.However, negative group and control group’ anxiety level after attention biasmodifying have no difference from attention bias modification before.Conclusions:（1）High trait anxiety individuals have attention bias on negativeemotion faces.（2）Attention bias modification programs received by neutral group have moreadvantages in terms of improving negative attention bias than the other two groups’attention bias modifying programs. （3）Attention bias modification programs received by neutral group caneffectively reduce the high trait anxiety individuals’ anxiety level under the stressstate.