Cognitive theories of social anxiety suggest that people with social anxiety show bias toward social threat stimuli, which is related to the onset and maintenance of symptoms. A number of recent studies have been actively researching Attention Bias Mo...
Cognitive theories of social anxiety suggest that people with social anxiety show bias toward social threat stimuli, which is related to the onset and maintenance of symptoms. A number of recent studies have been actively researching Attention Bias Modification(ABM) training to improve social anxiety symptoms by modifying the biased attention to social threat stimuli. Previous studies that identified the effects of ABM training have mainly focused on standardizing the ABM training procedures, and have not yet examined the effects of training according to working memory capacity. In this study, we conducted ABM training for social anxiety tendency group in college students, and compared the degree of improvement of social anxiety symptoms and attention bias score depending on the level of working memory capacity. SADS was used to measure social anxiety symptoms, and scores above 64 in SADS was considered as a social anxiety tendency. Participants were divided into higher working memory groups, middle working memory groups, and low working memory groups depending on their working memory capacity. A total of 99 data were used for analysis. The effects of the ABM training were identified as changes in the attention bias score(ABS) and the social anxiety symptom scale(SADS, SIAS, SPS, B-FNE). The ABM training was conducted in a single session, and the ABS and social anxiety symptoms were measured before and after the training. Results showed that ABS, SADS, SIAS, SPS, and B-FNE were significantly decreased after training compared to before ABM training. This means that ABM training was effective in reducing social anxiety symptoms. Also after training, the higher the working memory capacity is, the more decrease in SADS, SIAS, SPS, and B-FNE. This suggests that the effects of ABM training may vary depending on working memory capacity. Finally, the therapeutic implications and limitations of this study discussed.