Selective attention to illness-related stimuli in Health Anxiety

Abstract

The literature review explores the nature of health anxiety or hypochondriasis, and discusses theoretical models of the disorder. The focus is upon cognitive-behavioural formulations of health anxiety, including attentional processes and the role of linguistic and pictorial information. Attentional bias toward threatening stimuli in other anxiety disorders is discussed. This includes consideration of the non-unitary nature of attentional bias where processes of vigilance towards, and maintenance of attention upon, threat stimuli are differentiated. Given that cognitive-behavioural models of hypochondriasis conceptualise the disorder as an anxiety about health, it is argued that exploration of attentional bias in health anxiety is also useful. The empirical study examines the occurrence of attentional bias toward health-threat stimuli in non-clinical student participants, who are anxious or non- anxious about health-related matters. The study also investigates whether format of the health-threat stimuli (word or pictorial) and duration of stimulus presentation has an effect, in terms of attentional bias. Results indicate the occurrence of attentional bias toward briefly presented health-threat pictures, but only when groups were separated according to a measure of fear of autonomic arousal-related symptoms (the Anxiety Sensitivity Index; Peterson & Reiss, 1992). No evidence of attentional bias toward health-threat stimuli was found when groups were separated according to a conventional measure of hypochondriasis (Illness Attitudes Scale; Kellner, 1986, 1987). The results are discussed in relation to literature on health-related fears. Clinical implications and suggestions for future research are also highlighted.

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