Department of Neuroscience, Imaging and Clinical Sciences, University G. D'Annunzio of Chieti-Pescara, 66100, Chieti Scalo, Italy.
Department of Psychological Sciences, Health and Territory, University G. D'Annunzio of Chieti-Pescara, 66100, Chieti Scalo, Italy.
Sci Rep. 2020 Oct 5;10(1):16476. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-73599-8.
After the COVID-19 worldwide spread, evidence suggested a vast diffusion of negative consequences on people's mental health. Together with depression and sleep difficulties, anxiety symptoms seem to be the most diffused clinical outcome. The current contribution aimed to examine attentional bias for virus-related stimuli in people varying in their degree of health anxiety (HA). Consistent with previous literature, it was hypothesized that higher HA would predict attentional bias, tested using a visual dot-probe task, to virus-related stimuli. Participants were 132 Italian individuals that participated in the study during the lockdown phase in Italy. Results indicated that the HA level predicts attentional bias toward virus-related objects. This relationship is double mediated by the belief of contagion and by the consequences of contagion as assessed through a recent questionnaire developed to measure the fear for COVID-19. These findings are discussed in the context of cognitive-behavioral conceptualizations of anxiety suggesting a risk for a loop effect. Future research directions are outlined.
在 COVID-19 在全球范围内传播之后，有证据表明它对人们的心理健康产生了广泛的负面影响。除了抑郁和睡眠困难，焦虑症状似乎是最普遍的临床结果。本研究旨在探讨不同健康焦虑程度的个体对病毒相关刺激的注意偏向。与先前的文献一致，我们假设更高的健康焦虑程度会预测对病毒相关刺激的注意偏向，使用视觉点探测任务进行测试。参与者是 132 名意大利人，他们在意大利封锁期间参与了这项研究。结果表明，健康焦虑程度可以预测对病毒相关物体的注意偏向。这种关系通过传染的信念和传染的后果双重中介来实现，传染的后果是通过最近开发的一种测量对 COVID-19 的恐惧的问卷来评估的。这些发现是在焦虑的认知行为概念的背景下讨论的，这表明存在循环效应的风险。概述了未来的研究方向。
