title: Attentional bias for psoriasis-specific and psychosocial threat in patients with psoriasis.
abstract: Information processing biases relate to the manner in which people attend to particular types of information more readily than others. This bias, which is central to cognitive models of disorder, has not been explored in patients with psoriasis. The purpose of this study was to examine whether patients with psoriasis show an automatic attentional bias to classes of information relative to controls. Sixty patients and 60 age- and sex-matched controls completed a computer-based attentional interference task (the modified Stroop task). Patients with psoriasis showed significant interference for disease-specific, self-referent, and others' behavior stimuli relative to controls. In terms of information processing biases, the relationship between subject status (psoriasis patient vs. control) and color-naming interference was significantly stronger than that between anxiety, depression and worry, and interference. Recall bias was limited to disease-specific stimuli only. The observed bias to threat is more appropriately accounted for by participant's status (i.e., psoriasis patient or control) than by psychological distress.
authors.affiliation: Dermatology Center, University of Manchester School of Medicine, Clinical Sciences Building, Hope Hospital, Stott Lane, Salford, Manchester M6 8HD, United Kingdom. donal.fortune@man.ac.uk
authors.forename: Dónal G
authors.initials: DG
authors.lastname: Fortune
authors.forename: Helen L
authors.initials: HL
authors.lastname: Richards
authors.forename: Alan
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Corrin
authors.forename: Robert J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Taylor
authors.forename: Christopher E
authors.initials: CE
authors.lastname: Griffiths
authors.forename: Chris J
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Main
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001007:Anxiety / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000209:etiology; D001288:Attention; D001332:Automatism; D003071:Cognition; D003118:Color Perception; D003863:Depression / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000209:etiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D008875:Middle Aged; D011565:Psoriasis / Q000523:psychology*; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000379:methods; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014825:Vocabulary