The role of attentional biases in PTSD: is it interference or facilitation?
Although attentional biases have been demonstrated in individuals with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the cognitive methodologies used have not allowed for disambiguation of two types of attentional biases. It remains unclear if PTSD involves difficulty disengaging attention from threatening stimuli (interference) or facilitated detection. To differentiate between attentional interference and facilitation, 57 male Vietnam-era veterans (30 High PTSD and 27 Low PTSD) completed a visual search task with a lexical decision component. High PTSD veterans who engaged in the interference task first showed increased interference to threat-relevant words relative to Low PTSD veterans. However, no evidence was found for facilitated detection of threatening stimuli in PTSD.
Pineles
Suzanne L
SL
VA Boston Healthcare System, National Center for PTSD, Women's Health Sciences Division (116B-3), Boston, MA, USA. suzanne.pineles@va.gov
Shipherd
Jillian C
JC
Welch
Lisa P
LP
Yovel
Iftah
I
D001007:Anxiety / Q000523:psychology; D001288:Attention; D039721:Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011930:Reaction Time; D012660:Semantics; D013313:Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic / Q000523:psychology*; D014728:Veterans / Q000523:psychology