ABSTRACT
In metacognitive theory, psychological disorder is linked to a loss of cognitive resources and attentional ¯exibility. This is a problem because psychological change and the control of cognition require processing resources, yet these are constrained by the CAS. Loss of resources and executive control means that individuals have de®ciencies in the top-down control or suppression of activity in lower-level and more re¯exive emotion processing networks in the brain (i.e. amygdala). In addition, focusing attention on threat limits the person's access to information that can correct faulty ideas in feared situations. It follows that it would be bene®cial in treatment to develop techniques that recover resources, increase ¯exible (executive) control over processing and enhance the ¯ow of corrective information into processing. With this goal in mind, techniques such as Attention Training (Wells, 1990; see Point 24) and Situational Attentional Refocusing (Wells & Papageorgiou, 1998; see Point 26) have been developed as part of MCT.
