Content specificity of attentional bias to COVID-19 threat-related information in trait anxiety

IntroductionAnxious individuals selectively attend to threatening information, but it remains unclear whether attentional bias can be generalized to traumatic events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Previous studies suggested that specific threats related to personal experiences can elicit stronger a...

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Veröffentlicht in:Frontiers in psychiatry 2023-11, Vol.14, p.1254349-1254349
Hauptverfasser: Zhao, Yiming, Jia, Xun, Pan, Shunjie, Ji, Haifeng, Wang, Yanmei
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Sprache:eng
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Zusammenfassung:IntroductionAnxious individuals selectively attend to threatening information, but it remains unclear whether attentional bias can be generalized to traumatic events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Previous studies suggested that specific threats related to personal experiences can elicit stronger attentional bias than general threats. The current study aimed to investigate the relationship between content-specific attentional bias and trait anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodsAttentional bias was assessed using the dot-probe task with COVID-19-related, general threat-related, and neutral words at two exposure times, 200 and 500 ms.ResultsWe found participants with high trait anxiety exhibited attentional bias toward COVID-19- related stimuli and attentional bias away from general threat-related stimuli, while participants with low trait anxiety showed attentional bias away from both types of stimuli.DiscussionResults suggest that individuals with high trait anxiety show a content-specific attentional bias to COVID-19-related information during the COVID-19 pandemic. Apart from the innate attentional bias toward biological threats, individuals with high trait anxiety may also learn from trauma and develop trauma-specific attentional bias.
ISSN:1664-0640
1664-0640
DOI:10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1254349