Anxiety is the most common mental health problem in children and adolescents. This two-phased study will test the effects of an experimental computerized intervention aimed at reducing threat-based thinking (i.e., interpretation bias) in anxious youth. Participants in both the R61 (N=46) and R33 (N=72) trials will be youth ages 10 to 17 with a primary anxiety disorder (Separation, Social, Generalized). In the R61 trial, youth will be randomly assigned to receive 16 sessions over 4 weeks of either a personalized cognitive bias modification program for interpretation bias (CBM-I) or a computerized control condition (ICC). If CBM-I reduces interpretation bias significantly more than the ICC, the R33 trial will commence. In the R33, youth will be randomly assigned to either CBM-I or an equal amount of time in a cognitive restructuring intervention, which also aims to reduce threat-based thinking in anxiety. Please note that only the R61 phase of the trial has been completed and currently this record summary only reflects the R61 phase.
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Change in Linguistic Interpretation Bias as Assessed by the Word-sentence Association Paradigm for Youth (WSAP-Y)
Timeframe: 6 weeks; post-intervention time point
Change in Visual Interpretation Bias as Assessed by the Ambiguous Faces Task
Timeframe: 6 weeks; post-intervention time point
Change in Self-reported Interpretation Bias as Measured by the Children's Automatic Thoughts Scale (CATS)
Timeframe: 6 weeks; post-intervention time point