Mood volatility with rumination but neither attentional nor interpretation biases in chronic fatigue syndrome

Abstract

Rumination and distraction lead to greater mood volatility in CFS individuals than in controls, but not to attentional nor interpretation biases in the early automatic stages of information processing in CFS individuals.

Attentional and interpretive bias towards illness‐related information in chronic fatigue syndrome: A systematic review

“…The Stroop studies found little support for an interference effect of illness‐related stimuli in CFS populations. In contrast, findings from the visual‐probe studies indicated that for people with CFS, health‐threatening and illness‐related information engages (500 ms) and maintains (1,250 ms) their attention more than neutral information; an attentional bias effect was not found for 100 ms (Martin & Alexeeva, ), indicating that in a CFS population, attentional bias may occur at the elaboration phase of the information processing system, rather than at the initial orientation phase. Thus, cognitive biases in CFS may represent a specific cognitive strategy developed to avoid further injury and disability.…”

“…Before the exogenous cueing task, all participants were randomly allocated to either a rumination induction (instructed to read/think about present physical sensations, emotions, and thoughts) or distraction induction (instructed to read/think about neutral external matters, such as objects). Martin and Alexeeva () found no support for an early attentional bias towards either illness‐related or social anxiety words in a CFS sample compared to healthy controls, even when participants were induced into a ruminative state.…”

“…Martin and Alexeeva () employed an exogenous cueing task. Stimuli were presented for 100 ms and consisted of neutral, social threat, and illness words, based on stimuli from Moss‐Morris and Petrie () and the pain literature (Keogh, Ellery, Hunt, & Hannent, ).…”

“…Martin and Alexeeva () used an online lexical decision task to measure interpretive bias after inducing a neutral or ruminative state. The lexical decision task required participants to quickly identify whether a string of letters (target) that appeared on screen was a word or non‐word, whilst they listened to homophones with illness, depression, or neutral interpretations.…”

Symptoms and the body: Taking the inferential leap

“…These effects may be attributable to increased avoidance of health-threat rather than engagement with it (De Ruiter and Brosschot, 1994), however, or stimulus negativity more generally (Posserud et al, 2009). Studies using the dot-probe and exogenous cueing paradigms have not found evidence of attentional bias in MUS patients (Chapman and Martin, 2011;Hou et al, 2008;Martin and Alexeeva, 2010;Martin and Chapman, 2010;van der Veek et al, 2014;Witthöft et al, 2006).…”