In this paper results are presented on the changes induced by emissive electrode biasing in the ISTTOK edge transport. The boundary plasma is characterized with focus on the relation between E ×B sheared flows and particle transport. We suggest that the distinct behaviour of the particle confinement for positive and negative bias observed in ISTTOKis related to the lowE×B shear induced by positive bias in the core periphery region associated with the appearance of large amplitude fluctuations. In addition, the effect of the electrode bias on the edge turbulent transport has been investigated identifying the changes induced in the fluctuations frequency spectrum and probability density function. We have shown that negative electrode bias reduces the propagation of large-scale events, making the fluctuations distribution more Gaussian and resulting in low amplitude fluctuations across most of the edge plasma region. For positive bias, large amplitude broad spectrum fluctuations appear in the core periphery, which increase the cross-field diffusion and contribute to the observed asymmetry in particle transport with the bias polarity.