‘Relearning how to think’: A brief online intervention to modify biased interpretations in emotional disorders—study protocol for a randomised controlled trial

BACKGROUND: Cognitive biases play an important role in the development and maintenance of emotional disorders, such as depression and anxiety. Novel procedures, known as Cognitive Bias Modification (CBM), aim to reduce these dysfunctional information processing modes. This study develops a brief clinically based online intervention programme to modify biased interpretations in depression and anxiety (CBM-I(Clin)), overcoming some methodological issues that have been addressed in previous literature. METHODS: Volunteer participants will be recruited via social media and posters at the university. They will be randomly assigned to an experimental group or a waiting list control group. Both groups will complete two assessment sessions (before and after the intervention) consisting of questionnaires measuring cognitive and emotional variables as well as experimental tasks measuring cognitive biases (i.e. attention, memory, and interpretation). After the first assessment session, only participants in the experimental group will receive a link to follow the four CBM-I(Clin) sessions at home. All participants will receive, via email, follow-up questionnaires 2 weeks and 3 months after the second assessment. DISCUSSION: This study will test the 'Relearning how to think', an online programme potentially beneficial to modify cognitive biases in emotional disorders. Several limitations of previous CBM procedures are addressed, and the impact of the programme both on objective cognitive bias tasks and clinical symptoms will be explored. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03987477. Prospectively registered on June 17, 2019