title: Attentional bias for affective visual stimuli in posttraumatic stress disorder and the role of depression.
abstract: An attentional bias for trauma-related verbal cues was frequently demonstrated in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) using variants of the emotional Stroop task (EST). However, the mechanisms underlying the Stroop-effect are ill-defined and it is yet unclear how the findings apply to different paradigms and stimulus modalities. To address these open questions, for the first time a spatial-cuing task with pictorial cues of different emotional valence was administered to trauma-exposed individuals with and without PTSD, and non-trauma-exposed controls. Groups did not show different response profiles across affective conditions. However, a group effect was evident when comparing depressed with non-depressed individuals: Those with depression showed delayed attending towards trauma-related cues and faster attending away from negative cues. In correlational analyses, attentional avoidance was associated with both depression and PTSD symptom severity. These findings highlight the need for research on trauma populations and anxiety in general to pay closer attention to depression as an important confound in the study of emotional information processing.
authors: University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Martinistr. 52, 20246 Hamburg, Germany.
authors: Marit
authors: M
authors: Hauschildt
authors: Charlotte
authors: C
authors: Wittekind
authors: Steffen
authors: S
authors: Moritz
authors: Michael
authors: M
authors: Kellner
authors: Lena
authors: L
authors: Jelinek
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D015982:Bias; D003463:Cues; D003863:Depression / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D011930:Reaction Time; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D013313:Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology; D057190:Stroop Test; D055815:Young Adult