The Effect of Smartphone-Delivered Approach Bias Modification Training on Relapse Among Patients Leaving Residential Alcohol Treatment: A Randomised Controlled Trial
Joshua B B Garfield, Danielle Whelan, Hugh Piercy, Malcolm Hopwood, Michael Maloney, Rajnarayan Mahasuar, Ariel D Roxburgh, Dan I Lubman, Victoria Manning · 2026
Read The Effect of Smartphone-Delivered Approach Bias Modification Training on Relapse Among Patients Leaving Residential Alcohol Treatment: A Randomised Controlled Trial by Joshua B B Garfield, Danielle Whelan, Hugh Piercy, Malcolm Hopwood, Michael Maloney, Rajnarayan Mahasuar, Ariel D Roxburgh, Dan I Lubman, Victoria Manning (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13278852.txt.
Description
Joshua B B Garfield leads a 2026 randomized trial of a smartphone training app meant to cut relapse after residential alcohol treatment. The training, called approach bias modification, retrains automatic urges to approach alcohol cues. It works when given during residential care, but few services offer it. Participants leaving treatment were sent a personalized app, with weekly tasks for four weeks.
Only 134 of 171 participants installed the app, leaving the trial underpowered. At three months, past-month abstinence was fifty-five percent in the sham-training control group and fifty-two percent in the training group, a non-significant difference. All secondary outcomes were also non-significant. Longer admissions and session counts may shape any effect, exploratory analyses hinted.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Joshua B B Garfield, Danielle Whelan, Hugh Piercy, Malcolm Hopwood, Michael Maloney, Rajnarayan Mahasuar, Ariel D Roxburgh, Dan I Lubman, Victoria Manning |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 63117 |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |