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01-12-2014 | Brief Report

A Focused Attention Intervention for Preventing the Recovery of Initial Learning

Authors: Holly C. Miller, Olivier Lefebvre, Pierre Lyon, James B. Nelson, Mikaël Molet

Published in: Cognitive Therapy and Research | Issue 6/2014

Abstract

Psychotherapy introduces new learning that can retroactively interfere with the expression of initial learning that contributed to psychological dysfunction. However, expression of the initial learning can spontaneously recover with time, and the prevention of this recurrence remains elusive. In a laboratory study, we explored whether having participants focus their attention on the present moment through guided instruction would reduce the recurrence of initial learning with the passage of time. All participants first learned a particular response to a cue before learning a new response. During testing, participants were presented with the cue and asked to provide a response. When tested immediately, participants provided the most recently learned response, but after a 16 min delay they also provided the initially learned response (i.e., spontaneous recovery). The focused-attention intervention significantly reduced the spontaneous recovery of the initial learning. This finding has theoretical value for research on therapeutic intervention.

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Causal ratings for O1 and O2 each contained one outlier (i.e., 2 standard deviations or more away from the mean) in each group in Phase 1. On test, there was one outlier in Group Unfocused in the ratings of O2. Among the variables containing outliers, the outliers were skewed in a direction opposite to the mean of the group containing it. When average ratings were high (e.g., O1 ratings in Phase 1) outliers were low scores (e.g., 0, 2) and when average ratings were low, outliers were high scores (e.g., 9). Thus, there was no transformation of the data that could uniformly correct the skew without being confounded with the identity of the variable. Overall, no participant produced consistently extreme scores. Outliers increase error variance and decrease differences between outcome means, making any conclusions regarding significant differences between outcomes conservative. Rather than exercise the many degrees of freedom available to the researcher in treating these few scores the outliers were retained and the data remained unmodified.

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Title: A Focused Attention Intervention for Preventing the Recovery of Initial Learning
Authors: Holly C. Miller
Olivier Lefebvre
Pierre Lyon
James B. Nelson
Mikaël Molet
Publication date: 01-12-2014
Publisher: Springer US
Published in: Cognitive Therapy and Research / Issue 6/2014
Print ISSN: 0147-5916
Electronic ISSN: 1573-2819
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-014-9625-9

At a glance: The STEP trials

Springer Medicine

A Focused Attention Intervention for Preventing the Recovery of Initial Learning

Abstract

At a glance: The STEP trials

Springer Medicine

Abstract

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