Effect of attention bias modification on depressive affect

Preventive interventions for depression, gain importance over time. Attentional bias, which is one of the cognitive biases seen in depressive affect and depression, is that the source of attention tends to move away from the positive stimulus while focusing on the negative stimulus. Attention bias modification, which is one of the cognitive bias modification, is to direct the focus of attention away from the negative stimulus to a positive or neutral stimulus. In this study, it was aimed to reduce level of attentional bias and depressive affect with attentional bias modification. The first stage of the research; It is the comparison of online and face-to-face applications in order to control the confounding effects in the online application. I n the second stage, a sample was created. The sample includes 45 participants with depressive affect. Research; It consisted of three groups, namely the experimental group, the placebo group, and the non-intervention group, and the participants were randomly assigned using the purposive sampling method. The Brief Symptom Inventory was applied as a preliminary measure and a clinical interview was conducted. In the pre-post measurement, Hamilton Depression Scale, Mood-StateAdjective Pairs List and Dot Probe Task were applied to measure depressive affect and attentional bias. The data were analyzed with SPSS 25 and parametric analyzes were used. One-way ANOVA was performed to evaluate the difference analyzes of the scales. One-way ANOVA for Mixed Measures was applied to look at the effect of groups and pre-post measurements together. All analyzes were performed at a 95% confidence interval and the p value of 0.05 was used as a reference. The findings are that the attentional bias level of the participants in the experimental group decreased and there was no difference in the placebo and non-intervention groups. On the other hand, there was a significant decrease in depressive affect in the experimental and placebo groups, but no difference was found in the non-intervention group. In addition to these findings, in the cognitive domain, which is one of the subscales of NSCL, different from the comparison of the item total, cognitive development was detected in the experimental group. In addition, when the response rates of the placebo and experimental groups were evaluated temporally, the reaction rates of both groups to the positive stimulus increased while the reaction times to the negative stimulus were prolonged. However, this change curve occurred more quickly in the experimental group. The results of the research were discussed within the framework of the nature of depressive affect, placebo conditions and research method