Journal of Forensic Psychology

Abstract

The Effectiveness of MBSR Training on Attention, Memory and Interpretation Bias to Emotional Stimuli in People with GAD Symptoms

Hesam Goodarzi, Mohammad Ali Ameri*

Objectives: The aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) training on the cognitive biases toward emotional stimuli in individuals with generalized anxiety disorder.

Methods: In this study, using the GAD-7 questionnaire, 40 individuals with a mean age of 32.53 who were diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder were selected. The participants in the experimental group underwent an 8-session MBSR training program after the pre-test. In the pre-test, post-test and follow-up stages, the participants were evaluated using dot-probe, N-back and eye-reading tests, which were used to measure attentional bias, memory bias and interpretative bias, respectively. After data collection, the data were analyzed using SPSS 26 and repeatedmeasures ANOVA.

Results: The results of the dot-probe test showed that MBSR training led to a significant decrease in the reaction time to emotional and non-emotional stimuli in the post-test and follow-up stages compared to the pre-test stage. In the eye-reading test, we observed that the accuracy of identifying the test items in the post-test and follow-up stages differed significantly from the accuracy in the pre-test stage due to the intervention.

Conclusion: The results indicate that mindfulness-based stress reduction training can be effective in reducing cognitive biases toward emotional stimuli.

Published Date: 2025-10-11; Received Date: 2024-09-02