Zhang Melvyn, Ying JiangBo, Song Guo, Fung Daniel Ss, Smith Helen
National Addictions Management Service, Institute of Mental Health, Singapore, Singapore.
Medical Board / Department of Development Psychiatry, Institute of Mental Health, Singapore, Singapore.
JMIR Mhealth Uhealth. 2018 May 24;6(5):e10034. doi: 10.2196/10034.
Automatic processes, such as attentional biases or interpretative biases, have been purported to be responsible for several psychiatric disorders. Recent reviews have highlighted that cognitive biases may be modifiable. Advances in eHealth and mHealth have been harnessed for the delivery of cognitive bias modification. While several studies have evaluated mHealth-based bias modification intervention, no review, to our knowledge, has synthesized the evidence for it. In addition, no review has looked at commercial apps and their functionalities and methods of bias modification. A review is essential in determining whether scientifically validated apps are available commercially and the proportion of commercial apps that have been evaluated scientifically.
The objective of this review was primarily to determine the proportion of attention or cognitive bias modification apps that have been evaluated scientifically and secondarily to determine whether the scientifically evaluated apps were commercially available. We also sought to identify commercially available bias modification apps and determine the functionalities of these apps, the methods used for attention or cognitive bias modification, and whether these apps had been evaluated scientifically.
To identify apps in the published literature, we searched PubMed, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, and Scopus for studies published from 2000 to April 17, 2018. The search terms used were "attention bias" OR "cognitive bias" AND "smartphone" OR "smartphone application" OR "smartphone app" OR "mobile phones" OR "mobile application" OR mobile app" OR "personal digital assistant." To identify commercial apps, we conducted a manual cross-sectional search between September 15 and 25, 2017 in the Apple iTunes and Google Play app stores. The search terms used to identify the apps were "attention bias" and "cognitive bias." We also conducted a manual search on the apps with published evaluations.
The effectiveness of bias modification was reported in 7 of 8 trials that we identified in the published literature. Only 1 of the 8 previously evaluated apps was commercially available. The 17 commercial apps we identified tended to use either an attention visual search or gamified task. Only 1 commercial app had been evaluated in the published literature.
This is perhaps the first review to synthesize the evidence for published mHealth attention bias apps. Our review demonstrated that evidence for mHealth attention bias apps is inconclusive, and quite a few commercial apps have not been validated scientifically.
自动加工过程，如注意偏向或解释偏向，被认为与多种精神疾病有关。最近的综述强调认知偏向可能是可改变的。电子健康和移动健康的进展已被用于提供认知偏向矫正。虽然有几项研究评估了基于移动健康的偏向矫正干预，但据我们所知，尚无综述对其证据进行综合。此外，尚无综述关注商业应用程序及其功能和偏向矫正方法。进行综述对于确定是否有经过科学验证的应用程序可供商业使用以及已进行科学评估的商业应用程序的比例至关重要。
本综述的主要目的是确定经过科学评估的注意力或认知偏向矫正应用程序的比例，其次是确定经过科学评估的应用程序是否可供商业使用。我们还试图识别可供商业使用的偏向矫正应用程序，确定这些应用程序的功能、用于注意力或认知偏向矫正的方法，以及这些应用程序是否经过科学评估。
为了在已发表的文献中识别应用程序，我们在PubMed、MEDLINE、PsycINFO和Scopus中搜索了2000年至2018年4月17日发表的研究。使用的搜索词为“注意偏向”或“认知偏向”以及“智能手机”或“智能手机应用程序”或“智能手机应用”或“移动电话”或“移动应用程序”或“移动应用”或“个人数字助理”。为了识别商业应用程序，我们于2017年9月15日至25日在苹果iTunes和谷歌Play应用商店进行了手动横断面搜索。用于识别应用程序的搜索词为“注意偏向”和“认知偏向”。我们还对有已发表评估的应用程序进行了手动搜索。
我们在已发表文献中识别出的8项试验中有7项报告了偏向矫正的有效性。之前评估的8个应用程序中只有1个可供商业使用。我们识别出的17个商业应用程序倾向于使用注意力视觉搜索或游戏化任务。在已发表的文献中只有1个商业应用程序经过了评估。
这可能是第一篇综合已发表的移动健康注意偏向应用程序证据的综述。我们的综述表明，移动健康注意偏向应用程序的证据尚无定论，相当多的商业应用程序尚未经过科学验证。
