Combined “top-down” and “bottom-up” intervention for anxiety sensitivity: Pilot randomized trial testing the additive effect of interpretation bias modification
Section snippets
Trial design and procedure
Participants were invited for the experiment appointment via the psychology department's secure research participant registration website. They began the appointment by reading and signing an informed consent that ensured confidentiality and thoroughly outlined their proposed study involvement. The study was approved by the university's Institutional Review Board. Participants then completed the battery of baseline measures [e.g., Anxiety Sensitivity Index-3 (ASI-3), Beck Anxiety Index (BAI)]
Sample and preliminary analysis
Random assignment resulted in fairly even division of participants across the ASAT-P+ (n = 30, 49%) and the ASAT-P− conditions (n = 31, 51%). Means of the ASI-3, BAI, and several demographic variables are provided in Table 1. Variables were compared across the active and control condition to determine the success of randomization. There were no differences across the ASI-3, the BAI, gender, and ethnicity, indicating that participants appeared to be successfully randomized. There were a total of
Discussion
The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effect of adding a bottom-up computer-delivered AS intervention to a top-down psychoeducation intervention. Findings indicated that the addition of CBM-I to psychoeducation was successful in reducing self-reported AS, and that these significant reductions were maintained at a one-month follow-up. The study also found significantly fewer participants in the ASAT-P+ condition reported a panic response to a VC breath CO2 challenge. Lastly, mediation
Author contributions
Dr. Capron led the creation of the CBM-I intervention, supervised the revision of the psychoeducation intervention, was principal investigator of the execution of the study and completed the initial draft of the manuscript.
Mr. Norr assisted in the creation of the interventions and revised the manuscript.
Mr. Allan conducted the majority of analyses and wrote the majority of the results section.
Dr. Schmidt supervised the project and provided critical feedback on the manuscript.
Funding
No funding was received for this study.
Conflicts of interest
All authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Joshua Russell and Brittany Dane for their assistance creating the intervention and running participants.
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