Effectiveness of Attention Control Training on Attentional Bias Towards Death, Death Anxiety, and Sensitivity to Mortality Salience

Attention Control Training is a new cognitive intervention that improves emotion regulation by reducing attentional bias towards negative information. Given the significant association between death anxiety and emotion dysregulation and death-related attentional bias, this study aimed to assess attention control training as an intervention for reducing death anxiety.

 In this clinical trial, the Convenience Sampling Method sampled 50 university students in Tehran and was randomly assigned to 2 experimental and 1 control groups. Attention control training was delivered using death-related stimuli for the 1st experimental group and negative stimuli unrelated to death for the 2nd experimental group. The control group didn’t receive any interventions. In 3 measurements of pretest, posttest, and 3 months follow-up, death-related attentional bias, death anxiety, and sensitivity to mortality salience were assessed, respectively, using the Modified Stroop Test, Multidimensional Fear of Death Scale (MFODS), and Propensity to Moral Disengagement Scale (PMDS) after inducing Mortality Salience condition.

This study was registered at the Iranian Registry of Clinical Trials (Code: IRCT20190406043181N1) and was approved by the research ethics committee of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences (Code: IR.SBMU.MSP.REC.1398.539).

 The study showed that after completing attention control training, the 1st experimental group’s death-related attentional bias, death anxiety, and sensitivity to mortality salience were significantly reduced (P<0.05), and this reduction was maintained at 3 months of follow-up. No significant changes were observed in the other two groups (P>0.05).

Based on the results of this study, it can be concluded that attention control training is capable of significantly reducing death-related attentional bias, and this reduction in attentional bias leads to decreased death anxiety and sensitivity to mortality salience