Abstract
Attentional biases have been observed in populations with psychological disorders, but have been under-investigated in populations with physical illnesses. This study investigated potential attentional biases in asthma as a function of mood. Asthma (N = 45), and healthy (N = 39) participants were randomly allocated to a depressed or a neutral mood state induction. They completed a visual probe task that measured participants’ reaction times to health-threat and neutral pictures and words. Compared to the healthy controls, the asthma group showed attentional bias towards health-threat pictures in depressed mood, and avoidance of health-threat pictures in neutral mood. Attentional biases were found in a group with a physical illness as a function of induced mood. It is suggested that attentional processes in people with physical illness may be important in relation to symptom perception and illness management.
Highlights
Current asthma treatments aim to control and manage the symptoms in order to prevent lung function deterioration and asthma attacks (GINA 2015)
In support of the first hypothesis, the asthma group in an induced depressed mood showed an attentional bias towards health-threat pictures, compared to the asthma group in a neutral mood and to the healthy controls in either a depressed or a neutral mood
The results indicated that this attentional bias may be due to difficulty disengaging from health threat, as opposed to hypervigilance towards health threat
Summary
Current asthma treatments aim to control and manage the symptoms in order to prevent lung function deterioration and asthma attacks (GINA 2015). Lowther et al (2015) found attentional bias towards asthma words in children with asthma as compared to children without asthma using a visual probe task that included asthma-related, anxiety, and negative emotional words These words were presented for 1250 ms, deemed more suitable for children because their processing times are likely to be slower than adults. Negative affect and depressed mood in asthma are associated with attentional bias towards respiratory-related words, increased sensitivity to symptoms (e.g. breathlessness) and amplified perception of symptoms in the absence of any physiological changes in adults (De Peuter et al, 2007; Jessop et al, 2004; Martinez-Moragon et al, 2003; Put et al, 2004) and in children (Lowther et al, 2015). The current study utilised more general health-threat words and pictures, instead of asthma-related stimuli, in order to further investigate the nature of attentional bias in asthma. The asthma participants following depressed mood induction will demonstrate greater attentional bias towards threat pictures than threat words
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