Cognitive Bias Modification: a systematic review of available interventions and bias measurement paradigms
Method Stream: Literature Review
ECs: Only 14 EC (standard, no or limited own data collection. Applicable in case of a clinical internship)
Description:
A growing body of research shows that automatic and unconscious mental processes, so-called cognitive biases, play a causal role in health-related behaviors (healthy food, alcohol abuse), in somatic disease symptoms like pain and chronic fatigue, and in mental health disorders, like anxiety. Traditional psychosocial interventions, however, do not target these cognitive biases. Computer-mediated techniques, Cognitive Bias Modification (CBM), have recently emerged that can correct these maladaptive biases with simple repetitive association tasks.
CBM techniques have been developed for different cognitive biases related to fatigue, including attentional bias (Att-CBM), self-identity bias (SI-CBM; Geerts 2023; Wolbers 2021), and interpretation bias (CBM-I). Evidence of how effective CBM-I is, is emerging, and within the domain of (chronic) psychosomatic symptoms in particular.
Another potentially interesting avenue for cognitive bias (and CBM) research involves positive psychological constructs, like mindfulness, strengths, hope, self-compassion.
In this thesis project, three topics for a review are available.
1. Cognitive biases related to positive mental health concepts: scoping review of available implicit measures of constructs in the domain of positive psychology, and psychometric evidence (excluding: self-esteem, social relatedness, mindfulness)
2. CBM targeting positive mental health concepts: effectiveness review of available implicit interventions targeting these.
Both topics relate to and build on a research line within PHT including the PhD projects of Laurens (Breindebaas: CBM targeting alcohol approach bias in addiction treatment) and Geerts (IVY: CBM targeting fatigue in surviving cancer patients.
References
Some readings on the topic:
Recently published M-thesis
Jones & Sharpe, 2017
Martinelli et al., 2022
Sharpe et al., 2022
Hughes et al., 2017
Prior studies in our group on fatigue and alcohol CBM:
Wolbers et al., 2021
Geerts et al., 2023
Geerts et al., 2025
Laurens et al., 2020
Laurens et al., 2023