Citation

Fleurkens P, Rinck M, van Minnen A. J. Anxiety Disord. 2011; 25(6): 783-787.

Affiliation

Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University Nijmegen, P.O. Box 9104, 6500 HE Nijmegen, The Netherlands; Overwaal, Centre for Anxiety Disorders, P.O. Box 31435, 6503 CK Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2011, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.janxdis.2011.03.014

PMID

21531116

Abstract

The present study investigated specificity of attentional biases for trauma-related stimuli using an Emotional Stroop Task. Participants were 14 women suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) who had experienced a sexual trauma and 24 healthy non-traumatized women. They were asked to name print colors of 4 different word types: threatening sexual violence words and non-threatening sexual words, threatening accident trauma words, and positive words. Compared to control participants, PTSD patients displayed increased interference by threatening trauma-related, but not by accident trauma and positive words. Interference by non-threatening sexual words occurred as well, but only in those patients who suffered from more severe PTSD arousal symptoms. These findings suggest graded generalization of the attentional bias across stimuli of varying emotional valence, but specificity regarding the trauma topic. Results are discussed in light of current cognitive models of PTSD, and clinical implications are suggested.

Language: en