Zhang Yan-Bo, Wang Peng-Chong, Ma Yun, Yang Xiang-Yun, Meng Fan-Qiang, Broadley Simon A, Sun Jing, Li Zhan-Jiang
The Department of Clinical Psychology and National Clinical Research Center for Mental Disorders and Beijing Key Laboratory of Mental Disorders, Beijing An'Ding Hospital, Capital Medical University, and Center of Schizophrenia, Beijing Institute for Brain Disorders, Beijing 100089, China.
Menzies Health Institute Queensland and School of Medicine, Griffith University, Gold Coast 4222, Queensland, Australia.
World J Psychiatry. 2021 Mar 19;11(3):73-86. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v11.i3.73.
Illness anxiety disorder (IAD) is a common, distressing, and debilitating condition with the key feature being a persistent conviction of the possibility of having one or more serious or progressive physical disorders. Because eye movements are guided by visual-spatial attention, eye-tracking technology is a comparatively direct, continuous measure of attention direction and speed when stimuli are oriented. Researchers have tried to identify selective visual attention biases by tracking eye movements within dot-probe paradigms because dot-probe paradigm can distinguish these attentional biases more clearly.
To examine the association between IAD and biased processing of illness-related information.
A case-control study design was used to record eye movements of individuals with IAD and healthy controls while participants viewed a set of pictures from four categories (illness-related, socially threatening, positive, and neutral images). Biases in initial orienting were assessed from the location of the initial shift in gaze, and biases in the maintenance of attention were assessed from the duration of gaze that was initially fixated on the picture per image category.
The eye movement of the participants in the IAD group was characterized by an avoidance bias in initial orienting to illness-related pictures. There was no evidence of individuals with IAD spending significantly more time viewing illness-related images compared with other images. Patients with IAD had an attention bias at the early stage and overall attentional avoidance. In addition, this study found that patients with significant anxiety symptoms showed attention bias in the late stages of attention processing.
Illness-related information processing biases appear to be a robust feature of IAD and may have an important role in explaining the etiology and maintenance of the disorder.
疾病焦虑障碍（IAD）是一种常见、令人痛苦且使人衰弱的病症，其关键特征是持续坚信自己可能患有一种或多种严重或进行性身体疾病。由于眼球运动受视觉空间注意力引导，眼动追踪技术是一种在刺激定向时相对直接、连续地测量注意力方向和速度的方法。研究人员试图通过在点探测范式中追踪眼球运动来识别选择性视觉注意偏差，因为点探测范式能够更清晰地辨别这些注意偏差。
研究疾病焦虑障碍与疾病相关信息的偏向性加工之间的关联。
采用病例对照研究设计，记录疾病焦虑障碍患者和健康对照者在观看四类图片（疾病相关、社会威胁、积极和中性图片）时的眼球运动。从首次注视转移的位置评估初始定向偏差，从每张图片类别最初注视图片的持续时间评估注意力维持偏差。
疾病焦虑障碍组参与者的眼球运动特点是在初始定向时对疾病相关图片存在回避偏差。没有证据表明疾病焦虑障碍患者与其他图片相比，花费显著更多时间观看疾病相关图片。疾病焦虑障碍患者在早期存在注意偏差且总体上存在注意回避。此外，本研究发现有明显焦虑症状的患者在注意力加工后期存在注意偏差。
疾病相关信息加工偏差似乎是疾病焦虑障碍的一个稳定特征，可能在解释该障碍的病因和维持方面具有重要作用。
