General threat and health-related attention biases in illness anxiety disorder. A brief research report

Ștefan, Simona; Zorila, Alexandru; Brie, Elena

doi:10.1080/02699931.2019.1645643

Cited by 6 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Another noteworthy detail was that the combined between-group effect size of attentional vigilance toward health-threat was a negative value, though nonsignificant, indicating that the health-anxious individuals appeared to show a smaller vigilance bias compared to the controls. This tentatively accords with some previous observations (Stefan et al, 2020; Zhang et al, 2021) that IAD patients had early-stage attentional avoidance bias toward health-threat. However, we did not assess whether there is a greater attentional bias toward health-threat compared to neutral stimuli within the health anxiety group, so the early avoidance component needs further exploration.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

“…The different types of attentional bias in health anxiety were also explored by the spatial cueing and eye-tracking paradigm. One spatial cueing study revealed lower attentional facilitation scores for pictorial health-threat in IAD patients than in the controls, but the two groups did not differ in attentional disengagement and avoidance scores (Stefan, Zorila, & Brie, 2020). In contrast, one study by Zhang et al (2021), combining the traditional dot-probe task and eye-tracking technique, focused on eye movements during stimulus presentation of different image pairs types (the image pair presented for 2000 ms) and demonstrated both smaller vigilance bias to and greater delayed disengagement from illness pictures (relative to neutral pictures) in IAD group compared with the controls.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Attentional bias toward health-threat in health anxiety: a systematic review and three-level meta-analysis

et al. 2022

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Attentional bias toward health-threat may theoretically contribute to the development and maintenance of health anxiety, but the empirical findings have been controversial. This study aimed to synthesize and explore the heterogeneity in a health-threat related attentional bias of health-anxious individuals, and to determine the theoretical model that better represents the pattern of attentional bias in health anxiety. Four databases (Web of Science, PubMed, PsycINFO, and Scopus) were searched for relevant studies, with 17 articles (N = 1546) included for a qualitative review and 16 articles (18 studies) for a three-level meta-analysis (N = 1490). The meta-analytic results indicated that the health anxiety group, compared to the control group, showed significantly greater attentional bias toward health-threat (g = 0.256). Further analyses revealed that attentional bias type, paradigm, and stimuli type were significant moderators. Additionally, compared to the controls, health-anxious individuals displayed significantly greater attention maintenance (g = 0.327) but nonsignificant attention vigilance to health-threat (g = −0.116). Our results provide evidence for the attention maintenance model in health-anxious individuals. The implications for further research and treatment of elevated health anxiety in the context of coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) were also discussed.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attentional bias toward health-threat in health anxiety: a systematic review and three-level meta-analysis

et al. 2022

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“…For example, Foa et al ( 44 ) found among rape victims that trauma-related words elicited a stronger attentional bias than other threat-related words. Stefan et al ( 45 ) found that among individuals with illness anxiety disorder, the disengagement bias was stronger for health-related stimuli than general threat-related stimuli. These results suggest that attentional bias is most significant when threatening stimuli correspond to an individual’s current worries ( 46 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Content specificity of attentional bias to COVID-19 threat-related information in trait anxiety

Zhao,

Jia,

Pan

et al. 2023

Front. Psychiatry

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IntroductionAnxious individuals selectively attend to threatening information, but it remains unclear whether attentional bias can be generalized to traumatic events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Previous studies suggested that specific threats related to personal experiences can elicit stronger attentional bias than general threats. The current study aimed to investigate the relationship between content-specific attentional bias and trait anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodsAttentional bias was assessed using the dot-probe task with COVID-19-related, general threat-related, and neutral words at two exposure times, 200 and 500 ms.ResultsWe found participants with high trait anxiety exhibited attentional bias toward COVID-19- related stimuli and attentional bias away from general threat-related stimuli, while participants with low trait anxiety showed attentional bias away from both types of stimuli.DiscussionResults suggest that individuals with high trait anxiety show a content-specific attentional bias to COVID-19-related information during the COVID-19 pandemic. Apart from the innate attentional bias toward biological threats, individuals with high trait anxiety may also learn from trauma and develop trauma-specific attentional bias.

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“…A recent study by Stefan, Zorila and Brie [11] investigated the presence of facilitation, disengagement, or avoidance biases for general-threat and health-related threat stimuli in patients with illness anxiety disorder and in participants with low levels of health anxiety. By means of a spatial cueing task, the authors demonstrated a disengagement bias for health-related threatening stimuli in both patients and low-anxiety individuals.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Health Comes First”: Action Tendencies to Health-Related Stimuli in People with Health-Anxiety as Revealed by an Emotional Go/No-Go Task

Sagliano

Nappo

Liotti

et al. 2021

IJERPH

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The processing of health-related stimuli can be biased by health anxiety and anxiety sensitivity but, at the moment, it is far from clear whether health-related stimuli can affect motor readiness or the ability to inhibit action. In this preliminary study, we assessed whether different levels of health anxiety and anxiety sensitivity affect disposition to action in response to positive and negative health-related stimuli in non-clinical individuals. An emotional go/no-go task was devised to test action disposition in response to positive (wellness-related), and negative (disease-related) stimuli in non-clinical participants who also underwent well-validated self-report measures of health anxiety and anxiety sensitivity. The main results showed that both health anxiety and anxiety sensitivity biased participants’ responses. Importantly, safety-seeking and avoidance behaviors differently affected action disposition in response to positive and negative stimuli. These preliminary results support the idea that health anxiety and anxiety sensitivity could determine a hypervigilance for health-related information with a different perturbation of response control depending on the valence of the stimuli. Health anxiety and health anxiety disorder do form a continuum; thus, capturing different action tendencies to health-related stimuli could represent a valuable complementary tool to detect processing biases in persons who might develop a clinical condition.

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General threat and health-related attention biases in illness anxiety disorder. A brief research report

Cited by 6 publications

References 26 publications

Attentional bias toward health-threat in health anxiety: a systematic review and three-level meta-analysis

Attentional bias toward health-threat in health anxiety: a systematic review and three-level meta-analysis

Content specificity of attentional bias to COVID-19 threat-related information in trait anxiety

“Health Comes First”: Action Tendencies to Health-Related Stimuli in People with Health-Anxiety as Revealed by an Emotional Go/No-Go Task

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