Health anxiety and attentional bias: The time course of vigilance and avoidance in light of pictorial illness information

Cognitive-behavioral models of health anxiety stress the importance of selective attention not only towards internal but also towards external health threat related stimuli. Yet, little is known about the time course of this attentional bias. The current study investigates threat related attentional bias in participants with varying degrees of health anxiety. Attentional bias was assessed using a visual dot-probe task with health-threat and neutral pictures at two exposure durations, 175ms and 500ms. A baseline condition was added to the dot-probe task to dissociate indices of vigilance towards threat and difficulties to disengage from threat. Substantial positive correlations of health anxiety, anxiety sensitivity, and absorption with difficulties to disengage from threat were detected at 500ms exposure time. At an early stage (i.e., at 175ms exposure time), we found significant positive correlations of health anxiety and absorption with orientation towards threat. Results suggest a vigilance avoidance pattern of selective attention associated with pictorial illness related stimuli in health anxiety.