Attentional bias in individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder: A preliminary eye-tracking study

Mullen, Mairead; Hanna, Donncha; Bradley, Maria; Rogers, Dave; Jordan, Joanne; Dyer, Kevin

doi:10.1016/j.jbct.2020.10.005

Cited by 7 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 13 publications

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“…This attentional capture of threat could also potentially explain why no between-group difference in the aversive sound condition was found, as aversive stimuli were threatening for both groups, capturing attention equally. Indeed, research has supported the presence of an attentional bias to threat in healthy adults (Veerapa et al, 2020), however, generalised hypervigilance was noted to be a unique characteristic of several disorders, including phobia (Gerdes et al, 2008), obsessive-compulsive disorder (Mullen et al, 2021), and post-traumatic stress disorder (Brunetti et al, 2010), which share common features with misophonia including SN hyperactivity (e.g., Akiki et al, 2017).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigating Sound-Specific Attention Control in Mild to Moderate Misophonia Using a Modified Attention Network Test

Zumbrunn,

McGovern,

Boran

2023

Preprint

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A growing body of evidence suggests that attentional differences might be a core mechanism of misophonia, a condition characterised by negative psychological responses to bodily and/or repetitive sounds. However, it is unclear whether aberrant attentional processing affects people with misophonia (PwM) globally or only in the context of symptom provocation. Moreover, it is unclear whether attentional differences also exist for those with less severe misophonia levels. Here, a modified Attention Network Test with misophonic (e.g., chewing), aversive (e.g., baby crying), and neutral (e.g., birds singing) sounds was administered to explore whether mild/moderate misophonics have differing alerting, orienting, and executive control responses when listening to misophonia sounds compared to other types of sounds, as well as in comparison to a control group. Additionally, we explored whether the presence of specific types of triggers impacted attentional processing. In doing so, our results show a different pattern of alerting and orienting behaviour in PwM compared to the control group. Furthermore, PwM showed less efficient executive control upon hearing misophonia-eliciting sounds compared to aversive sounds. We propose that this difference in processing between groups reflects unpredictable threats in PwM. However, both a facilitation and distracting effect of the sound are possible explanations, which require further investigation.

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