A Personalized Approach to Effects of Affective Bias Modification on Symptom Change and Rumination

In the Affective bias modification (ABM) procedure, paired stimuli (e.g. a negative and a positive facial expression) are presented on a laptop screen, followed by one or two probes (dots) appearing in the spatial location of one of the stimuli. Participants are then required to press one of two buttons as quickly as possible to indicate the number of dots in the probe. Stimuli presentation time is 50% 500 ms and 50 % 1000 ms (evenly distributed throughout the task). In total, the ABM will comprise 90 trials of paired images of faces of different valences. In the active condition, the probe appears at the location of the most positive stimuli of each pair in 87 % of trials (encouraging a positive affective bias). Participants will do ABM in their homes (approx. 5 min.) twice a day for two weeks (28 sessions) using laptop computers provided by us.

In the Affective bias modification (ABM) procedure, paired stimuli (e.g. a negative and a positive facial expression) are presented on a laptop screen, followed by one or two probes (dots) appearing in the spatial location of one of the stimuli. Participants are then required to press one of two buttons as quickly as possible to indicate the number of dots in the probe. Stimuli presentation time is 50% 500 ms and 50 % 1000 ms (evenly distributed throughout the task). In total, the ABM will comprise 90 trials of paired images of faces of different valences. In the sham condition, the probe appears at the location of the most positive stimuli of each pair in 50 % of trials (no contingency between facial expressions shown and the probe location). Participants will do ABM in their homes (approx. 5 min.) twice a day for two weeks (28 sessions) using laptop computers provided by us.