Tip of the Week – Reducing Anxiety

You may now have a perfectly defensible reason to play Candy Crush. Recent research published in the journal Clinical Psychological Science showed that playing a distracting cell phone game app can reduce anxiety. Researchers applied gamification to an “emerging cognitive treatment for anxiety called attention-bias modification training. The treatment involves training patients to ignore a threatening stimulus (such as an angry face) and to focus instead on a non-threatening stimulus (such as a neutral or happy face).” Subjects that played a game for 25 minutes showed significantly reduced anxiety levels at stressful tasks that followed. Researchers hope that additional research will show that even shorter periods of game play will have similar benefits.