Ronald M. Rapee is currently Professor in the Department of Psychology, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia and director of the Centre for Emotional Health. Professor Rapee has established an international reputation for his research into the understanding and management of anxiety and related problems in both children and adults and has published widely in some of the leading scientific journals.
He has developed a number of empirically supported treatment programs that are used by researchers and therapists in countries across the world and have been honoured by awards from both scientific and consumer groups. Professor Rapee received the Distinguished Career Award from the Australian Association for CBT and the Distinguished Contribution to Science Award from the Australian Psychological Society.
He serves on the editorial board and acts as associate editor for international journals and provides consultation to a number of government, non-government and scientific bodies. Professor Rapee’s main professional interest is to provide a blend of scientifically rigorous but practically applied research and he derives particular pleasure from mentoring new researchers.
SUMMARY OF PROJECT:
Training benign interpretations in anxious children and adolescents
Although treatment for child anxiety have shown good efficacy, they have clear limits. Most importantly, treatment effects have not increased substantially over the past 10-20 years suggesting that we need to find innovative methods that progress treatment in new directions. In the adult field, the new movement toward training in modifications of cognitive biases provide some exciting promise.
The primary aim of the project is to train anxious children to reduce their natural tendency to interpret ambiguous material in a manner indicating danger. If we can do this, we can then use these procedures to increase the effects of standard psychological treatment.
Around 100 children aged 7 – 14 with primary anxiety disorders will be included. They will all participate in 2 weeks of training, at approximately 5-10 minutes per day. There will be two conditions: one trained to interpret ambiguous material in a benign manner and the other trained randomly to have no particular change in their interpretations. All children will sit in front of a computer each day and will read a series of 10 ambiguous sentences. In each sentence the final word will be missing some letters. Children need to type the correct letters as quickly as possible. For half the children, the correct word will give the sentence a neutral, benign meaning – thus training them to think benignly. For the other half, the correct word will be a completely neutral word that does not change their interpretation of the sentence. We will measure the children’s levels of anxiety before and after the 2 weeks of training.
The results of this study will demonstrate whether it is possible to train anxious children to reduce their tendency to automatically focus on the negative, dangerous meaning of any new situation and thereby reduce their anxiety. The findings will provide the first strong demonstration of the success of training procedures in this younger population. More importantly, once this effect has been shown, we can begin to incorporate the training into standard treatment for anxious children, providing a whole new paradigm in treatment delivery.