The Entire Technique Powering SP600125
In ACT exposure to the sources of one��s fears and reductions in avoidance of fear-evoking stimuli are crucial. Niles et al. (2013) found that pre-treatment attention biases were a better predictor of treatment outcome for participants who underwent CBT than for participants who underwent ACT. They hypothesize that ACT may specifically target and modify attentional processes and so the effects of individuals differences on treatment outcome are reduced. This suggests that individual differences in attention may only influence outcomes in CBT because there is insufficient modification of attention in existing CBT packages. ACT-based research also suggests that high levels of trait avoidance, similar to the attention-like trait of blunting, is predictive of lower engagement with the exposure components of treatment (Levitt et al., 2004). Future research could examine the benefit to CBT of incorporating some element of the attentional training that exists in approaches such as ACT. Clinical Implications The evidence reviewed here has several implications for clinical practice. We present one example of how individual difference variables can influence treatment outcomes. This has rather broad implications for clinical practice in suggesting that greater care should be taken in tailoring treatment to individual neuroSP600125 mouse cognitive profiles rather than to try and fit everyone into the same treatment. More specifically, similar to Parrish et al. (2008) who showed in their review of the effects of distraction on exposure outcome, we have shown that there is a range of evidence suggesting that threat-related biases in attention are not necessarily as negative as has been suggested elsewhere and there should be less clinical emphasis placed on resolving these biases where they exist. As was suggested by Legerstee et al. (2010) it may even be necessary to train attentional biases toward or away from threat in order to produce the best response to treatment. Nevertheless, clinicians may find it beneficial to measure attention biases prior to treatment in order to gear treatment to individual cognitive profiles. In the presence of no attention bias or an attention bias away from threat, it might be beneficial for clinicians to ensure that clients are focused on the exposure stimuli and not the context of exposure, as well as the threatening features of exposure stimuli and its commonalities with other similar stimuli. In the case of attention toward threat it would be important to ensure that clients aren��t overwhelmed by their anxiety, and in particular cases of SAD and PD, it would be important to make sure that clients do not focus too much on internal symptoms but also acknowledge that the anticipated negative outcome is not occurring.