Investigating the effects of gamified cognitive bias modification on immediate mood and depressive symptoms

Facial emotion recognition biases are prevalent in depression and may play a causal role in its aetiology and maintenance. Cognitive bias modification tasks improve these biases but have had mixed therapeutic results. This multi-session study tested the effects of a gamified cognitive bias modification (GCBM) task on emotion recognition bias and immediate mood and depressive symptoms. This two-arm randomized controlled trial compared control and training versions of web-based GCBM in 672 participants aged 18–30 years with self-reported depression. Participants completed four sessions of GCBM over 8 days, followed by a two-week follow-up session. Results showed that participants in the GCBM group categorized more ambiguous faces as happy post-training (B = 1.54, p < 0.001), and at the two-week follow-up (B = 1.44, p < 0.001), indicating reduced negative bias. However, there was no evidence of immediate mood improvement in the training condition compared to the control at the fourth session (B = 0.97, p = 0.54), or a reduction in depressive symptoms at the two-week follow-up (B = 0.37, p = 0.60). In conclusion while GCBM effectively changed participants’ judgements of emotional facial expressions, there was no evidence of a benefit on immediate mood or depressive symptoms among individuals with self-reported depression. Future research should investigate whether there are benefits within a clinical sample.