Cognitive bias modification of interpretations: a viable treatment for child and adolescent anxiety?

Anxiety disorders in children and adolescents are common and impairing. As many patients do not benefit from - or have difficulties accessing - frontline treatments, novel, effective and easy-to-deliver interventions are needed. Cognitive Bias Modification of Interpretations (CBM-I) training has been used to treat adult anxiety disorders. CBM-I methods train individuals to endorse benign rather than negative resolutions of ambiguous cues. Developmental extensions of CBM-I are important for several reasons. First, implementing CBM-I in symptomatic children and adolescents may facilitate early preventative gains. Second, as training uses simple learning mechanisms, CBM-I may reflect a developmentally-suitable strategy for shaping adaptive processing styles. Third, as this age range involves protracted neurocognitive maturation and associated plasticity, administering CBM-I early could drive powerful, long-lasting benefits for emotional development. Finally, data from CBM-I studies could inform the cognitive mechanisms involved in the genesis of early-emerging anxiety. This paper provides the first organised review of CBM-I studies conducted in children and adolescents, and contains suggestions for future research that may help realise the therapeutic potential of early CBM-I interventions.