Department of Clinical Psychology, Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, 55122 Mainz, Germany.
J Anxiety Disord. 2011 Dec;25(8):1131-8. doi: 10.1016/j.janxdis.2011.08.004. Epub 2011 Aug 11.
Cognitive-behavioral models of health anxiety stress the importance of selective attention not only towards internal but also towards external health threat related stimuli. Yet, little is known about the time course of this attentional bias. The current study investigates threat related attentional bias in participants with varying degrees of health anxiety. Attentional bias was assessed using a visual dot-probe task with health-threat and neutral pictures at two exposure durations, 175ms and 500ms. A baseline condition was added to the dot-probe task to dissociate indices of vigilance towards threat and difficulties to disengage from threat. Substantial positive correlations of health anxiety, anxiety sensitivity, and absorption with difficulties to disengage from threat were detected at 500ms exposure time. At an early stage (i.e., at 175ms exposure time), we found significant positive correlations of health anxiety and absorption with orientation towards threat. Results suggest a vigilance avoidance pattern of selective attention associated with pictorial illness related stimuli in health anxiety.
健康焦虑的认知-行为模型强调了选择性注意不仅对内，而且对外与健康威胁相关的刺激的重要性。然而，对于这种注意偏向的时间进程知之甚少。本研究调查了不同健康焦虑程度的参与者的与威胁相关的注意偏向。使用视觉点探测任务，以健康威胁和中性图片为刺激，在 175ms 和 500ms 两种暴露时间下评估注意偏向。在点探测任务中增加了一个基线条件，以区分对威胁的警觉指数和难以脱离威胁的困难。在 500ms 的暴露时间下，健康焦虑、焦虑敏感性和吸收与难以脱离威胁之间存在显著的正相关。在早期阶段（即 175ms 的暴露时间），我们发现健康焦虑和吸收与对威胁的定向之间存在显著的正相关。研究结果表明，在健康焦虑中，与图片相关的疾病刺激有关的选择性注意存在一种警惕回避模式。
