title: Attentional bias to activity of different parts of the body in children with functional abdominal pain: an experimental study.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To investigate whether children with functional abdominal pain (FAP) show an attentional bias for their bodily activity, and whether receiving information about bodily activity influenced perception of bodily sensations.
  
  
  METHODS
  A total of 30 children with FAP and 30 healthy children performed a dot-probe task, in which they were shown sham pictures about their bodily activity.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Contrary to our hypotheses, no attentional bias for gut activity was found in either group. However, children with FAP were slower than healthy children on all supraliminal gut-activity trials, suggesting that pictures of gut activity distracted children with FAP from the task they were performing. Both groups showed an attention bias away from supraliminal pictures about heart activity. As hypothesized, more children with FAP than healthy children reported increases in pain after the experiment.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Children with FAP seemed more strongly influenced by information about gut activity than healthy children. The present study should be replicated for intervention purposes.
authors.affiliation: PHD, Leiden University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Child and Family Studies, Wassenaarseweg 52, P.O. Box 9555, 2300 RB Leiden, The Netherlands. sveek@fsw.leidenuniv.nl.
authors.forename: Shelley M C
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: van der Veek
authors.forename: Bert H F
authors.initials: BH
authors.lastname: Derkx
authors.forename: Rachel D
authors.initials: RD
authors.lastname: Plak
authors.forename: Marc A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Benninga
authors.forename: Frits
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Boer
authors.forename: Ramón J L
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Lindauer
authors.forename: Else
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: de Haan
mesh_terms: D015746:Abdominal Pain / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology*; D000293:Adolescent; D001288:Attention; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010465:Perception
keywords: attentional bias; bodily activity; children and adolescents; functional abdominal pain; symptom perception hypothesis