Web-based cognitive bias intervention for psychiatric disorders: Protocol for a systematic review

Abstract

Background: Traditional psychological therapies focus mainly on modification of individuals' conscious decision-making process. Unconscious processes, such as cognitive biases, have been found accountable for various psychiatric psychopathologies, and advances in technologies have transformed how bias modification programs are being delivered. Objective: The primary aim of this review is to synthesize evidence of Web-based cognitive bias modification intervention for bias reduction. The secondary aim is to determine the change in symptoms for individual psychiatric disorders following bias modification. Methods: A systematic review will be conducted including only randomized trials. There will be no restrictions on participants included in the study. A search will be conducted on the respective databases until 2017. Selection of studies will be by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA-P) guidelines. Quality assessment of included studies will be conducted using the Cochrane Risk of Bias tool. A narrative synthesis of identified articles will then be conducted. A meta-analysis will be considered only if there are sufficient articles in a domain for statistical analysis. Ethical approval for this protocol and the planned systematic review was not required. Results: We expect that the review will be completed 12 months from publication of this protocol. Conclusions: This review is of importance given how technology has transformed delivery of conventional therapies. Findings from this review will guide future research involving technology and cognitive bias modification interventions. © Melvyn Zhang, Jiangbo Ying, Guo Song, Daniel SS Fung, Helen Smith. Originally published in JMIR Research Protocols (http://www.researchprotocols.org), 07.08.2018. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.