Positive Attention Bias Trained during the Rethink Therapeutic Online Game and Related Improvements in Children and Adolescents’ Mental Health

Abstract

Attentional bias towards positive stimuli is considered a resilience factor for mental health and well-being. The aim of the present study was to analyze the effects of an attentional bias training for positive faces in a preventive therapeutic game for children and adolescents. The sample of 54, which consisted of children and adolescents aged between 10–16 years, played the REThink game, which included an attentional bias training level based on the visual search paradigm, where children had the task to quickly find the happy face among other angry faces. We measured mental health, and positive and negative emotions and analyzed their associations between changes in attention bias. Attentional bias indicators demonstrated acceptable reliability and results showed that increases in attentional bias towards positive faces were associated with improvements in children and adolescents’ conduct problems, hyperactivity, and peer relationship problems. Overall, our results support the protective role of training attentional bias towards positive faces as part of a preventive therapeutic game for children and adolescents.