Case Control Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2021. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Psychiatr. Mar 19, 2021; 11(3): 73-86
Published online Mar 19, 2021. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v11.i3.73
Using eye movements in the dot-probe paradigm to investigate attention bias in illness anxiety disorder
Yan-Bo Zhang, Peng-Chong Wang, Yun Ma, Xiang-Yun Yang, Fan-Qiang Meng, Simon A Broadley, Jing Sun, Zhan-Jiang Li
Yan-Bo Zhang, Peng-Chong Wang, Yun Ma, Xiang-Yun Yang, Fan-Qiang Meng, Jing Sun, Zhan-Jiang Li, The Department of Clinical Psychology and National Clinical Research Center for Mental Disorders and Beijing Key Laboratory of Mental Disorders, Beijing An’Ding Hospital, Capital Medical University, and Center of Schizophrenia, Beijing Institute for Brain Disorders, Beijing 100089, China
Yan-Bo Zhang, Peng-Chong Wang, Yun Ma, Xiang-Yun Yang, Fan-Qiang Meng, Jing Sun, Zhan-Jiang Li, Advanced Innovation Center for Human Brain Protection, Capital Medical University, Beijing 100089, China
Yan-Bo Zhang, Psychology Department, Beijing Tongren Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing 100089, China
Simon A Broadley, Jing Sun, Menzies Health Institute Queensland and School of Medicine, Griffith University, Gold Coast 4222, Queensland, Australia
Author contributions: Zhang YB and Wang PC contributed equally to the study, both collected data, conducted statistical analysis, and drafted the manuscript and are parallel first authors; Ma Y, Yang XY, and Meng FQ collected the data; Broadley SA edited and commented on the manuscript’s intellectual content; Sun J and Li ZJ both contributed to the study equally; Sun J conducted statistical analysis, critically reviewed, edited, and revised the manuscript; Li ZJ designed and supervised the study.
Supported by the Capital Health Development Research Project, No. 2016-1-2121.
Institutional review board statement: The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Beijing An’Ding Hospital, Capital Medical University.
Informed consent statement: All patients gave informed consent.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors declare that they have no conflict of interests.
Data sharing statement: Technical appendix, statistical code, and dataset available from the corresponding author at ksiaaleila@yahoo.fr.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Jing Sun, PhD, Associate Professor, Menzies Health Institute Queensland and School of Medicine, Griffith University, Parkland Drive, Gold Coast 4222, Queensland, Australia. j.sun@griffith.edu.au
Received: December 1, 2020
Peer-review started: December 1, 2020
First decision: December 12, 2020
Revised: December 23, 2020
Accepted: January 28, 2021
Article in press: January 28, 2021
Published online: March 19, 2021
Processing time: 99 Days and 19 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: This is the first study which has examined patients with illness anxiety disorder (IAD) having an attention bias that is mainly manifested as attentional avoidance at the early stage and overall attentional maintenance when presented with illness-related stimuli. They also have demonstrated vigilance of attention at the early attention stage and overall attentional maintenance when presented with disease and positive/neutral stimuli. In addition, this study found that patients with suspected disorders with significant anxiety symptoms show attention bias in the late stage of attention processing and struggle to dismiss the stimulus, showing delayed detachment. This study suggests that patients with IAD have attention bias and this may have provided a new way of identification of IAD symptoms using an eye-tracking evaluation method.