Evaluation of the Factor Structure and Content Specificity of the Interpretation Bias Task (IBT)
- PDF / 686,088 Bytes
- 12 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 22 Downloads / 216 Views
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Evaluation of the Factor Structure and Content Specificity of the Interpretation Bias Task (IBT) Frederick H. F. Chan1 · Keisuke Takano2 · Jennifer Y. F. Lau3 · Tom J. Barry1,3
© The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Background Theories suggest that interpretation biases play a role in the aetiology of a range of psychopathology including depression, anxiety and psychosis. We evaluate the psychometric properties of an adapted version of an ambiguous scenario task (i.e., Interpretation Bias Task [IBT]) that assesses benign and negative interpretations in four domains: immediate bodily injury; long-term illness; social rejection; and, performance failure. Methods The factor structure of the IBT was evaluated in a student sample (N = 237) in Study 1, and subsequently confirmed in a community sample with a wider age range (N = 1103) in Study 2. Correlations between interpretation biases and health and social anxiety symptoms were tested in both studies. Results The four IBT domains were differentiable and each was represented by two factors (i.e., benign vs. negative). In Study 1, higher health anxiety was characterised by fewer benign interpretations for injury- and illness-related scenarios, whereas higher social anxiety was associated with more negative and fewer benign interpretations for social rejection and performance failure scenarios. Correlational results were replicated in Study 2 for social anxiety, but not health anxiety. Conclusions The IBT is suitable for measuring interpretation biases in Asian adults. The content specificity of interpretation biases was partially supported. Keywords Interpretation bias · Social anxiety · Health anxiety · Factor analysis · Content specificity
Introduction Theoretical models suggest that negative interpretation bias, the tendency to interpret ambiguous information in a negative way, underlie the course and severity of a range of mental disorders including depression, anxiety, and psychosis, and can also influence the treatment of these disorders (Blanchette and Richards 2010; Everaert et al. 2017; Hirsch et al. 2016; Leonidou and Panayiotou 2018; Mobini et al. 2013; Savulich et al. 2012; Stuijfzand et al. 2018). To date, evidence of interpretation bias in relation to different types of anxiety disorders have revealed reasonably consistent * Tom J. Barry [email protected]; [email protected] 1
The Experimental Psychopathology Lab, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, China
2
Department of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany
3
Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London, London, UK
results regarding the direction and intensity of these biases (Hirsch et al. 2016; Leonidou and Panayiotou 2018; Mobini et al. 2013; Schoth and Liossi 2017; Stuijfzand et al. 2018). For instance, people with health anxiety might endorse more pain-/illness-related interpretations for ambiguous healthrelated scenarios (Leonidou and Panayiotou 2018), whereas people with social anxiety might endo
Data Loading...
