Impact of a brief auditory attention training on a modified colour-word Stroop task in a high anxiety and worry sample

Poor attentional control leads to attentional biases that have been implicated in a range of psychiatric disorders and symptoms of psychological distress. Attention Training Technique (ATT) is an auditory intervention that aims to strengthen attentional control. A growing body of research indicates that ATT alleviates anxiety and depressive symptoms. The present study is a randomized control trial with repeated measures that tested if a lab-based, single-exposure of ATT strengthened attentional control using an objective measure of attention. Forty-six nonclinical participants who self-reported high anxiety/worry were recruited and randomly allocated to receive either ATT or a sham control intervention. Attentional control was assessed using both the standard and a modified version of the colour-word Stroop task. The modified version incorporated tactile interference to increase perceptual load and amplify the visual signal-to-noise ratio of the Stroop task. A series of mixed effects models, simple contrasts, and z-tests were used to evaluate if cross-modal interference worsened, and whether ATT was beneficial to, attentional control. Tactile interference increased reaction times but, when Stroop interference was controlled for, this was only true on incongruent trials. The impact of ATT was greatest under high perceptual load. A lab-based, single-exposure of ATT improves attentional control. This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article to be published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of Cognitive Psychology available online: https://tandfonline.com/toc/pecp21/current