No preconscious attentional bias towards itch in healthy individuals.

Autor: Becker JM; Health, Medical and Neuropsychology Unit, Institute of Psychology, Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands., Holle H; Department of Psychology, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Hull, Hull, United Kingdom., van Ryckeghem DML; Department of Experimental- Clinical and Health Psychology, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.; Section Experimental Health Psychology, Department of Clinical Psychological Science, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands.; Research Unit INSIDE, Institute of Health and Behavior, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Luxembourg, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg., Van Damme S; Department of Experimental- Clinical and Health Psychology, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium., Crombez G; Department of Experimental- Clinical and Health Psychology, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium., Veldhuijzen DS; Health, Medical and Neuropsychology Unit, Institute of Psychology, Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands., Evers AWM; Health, Medical and Neuropsychology Unit, Institute of Psychology, Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands.; Medical Delta professor Heatlhy Society, Leiden University, TU Delft, Erasmus Rotterdam, The Netherlands., Rippe RCA; Research Methods and Statistics, Institute of Education and Child Studies, Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands., van Laarhoven AIM; Health, Medical and Neuropsychology Unit, Institute of Psychology, Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: PloS one [PLoS One] 2022 Sep 02; Vol. 17 (9), pp. e0273581. Date of Electronic Publication: 2022 Sep 02 (Print Publication: 2022).
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0273581
Abstrakt: Rapidly attending towards potentially harmful stimuli to prevent possible damage to the body is a critical component of adaptive behavior. Research suggests that individuals display an attentional bias, i.e., preferential allocation of attention, for consciously perceived bodily sensations that signal potential threat, like itch or pain. Evidence is not yet clear whether an attentional bias also exists for stimuli that have been presented for such a short duration that they do not enter the stream of consciousness. This study investigated whether a preconscious attentional bias towards itch-related pictures exists in 127 healthy participants and whether this can be influenced by priming with mild itch-related stimuli compared to control stimuli. Mild itch was induced with von Frey monofilaments and scratching sounds, while control stimuli where of matched modalities but neutral. Attentional bias was measured with a subliminal pictorial dot-probe task. Moreover, we investigated how attentional inhibition of irrelevant information and the ability to switch between different tasks, i.e., cognitive flexibility, contribute to the emergence of an attentional bias. Attentional inhibition was measured with a Flanker paradigm and cognitive flexibility was measured with a cued-switching paradigm. Contrary to our expectations, results showed that participants attention was not biased towards the itch-related pictures, in facts, attention was significantly drawn towards the neutral pictures. In addition, no effect of the itch-related priming was observed. Finally, this effect was not influenced by participants' attentional inhibition and cognitive flexibility. Therefore, we have no evidence for a preconscious attentional bias towards itch stimuli. The role of preconscious attentional bias in patients with chronic itch should be investigated in future studies.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Databáze: MEDLINE
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