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Attentional Bias in Insomnia: The Dot-Probe Task with Pictorial Stimuli Depicting Daytime Fatigue/Malaise

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Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine whether individuals with primary insomnia (PI) have an attentional bias towards insomnia-specific stimuli, relative to normal sleepers (NS). Also, the aim was to determine if the attentional bias was characterized by vigilance or disengagement. A between-groups, matched design was employed. Forty-two individuals completed the study (PI = 21; NS = 21). Participants completed a dot-probe task with stimuli comprising insomnia-specific (fatigue/malaise) and neutral pictures. It was hypothesized that individuals with PI would show greater attentional bias to insomnia-specific stimuli compared with NS. An overall bias effect was noted. This effect was however not due to vigilance; taking into account the reaction times on neutral trials, the PI group and the NS group did not display significantly different results in reaction times to insomnia-specific pictures. On the contrary, the results suggest that the overall bias effect was due to disengagement; the PI group had significantly longer reaction times than the NS group when shifting away from the insomnia-specific pictures, relative to neutral–neutral picture presentations. The findings suggest that individuals with insomnia are not more vigilant than normal sleepers to insomnia-specific stimuli, but instead have greater difficulties in shifting away from such stimuli.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Law, Psychology, and Social Work, Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden

    Markus Jansson-Fröjmark, Mikael Bermås & Andreas Kjellén

  2. Department of Psychology, Stockholm University, 106 91, Stockholm, Sweden

    Markus Jansson-Fröjmark

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  1. Markus Jansson-Fröjmark
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  2. Mikael Bermås
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Correspondence to Markus Jansson-Fröjmark.

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We would like to express our gratitude to Eva Kimonis for sharing her dot probe task version with us as well as to Marcus Lind and Rikard Sunnhed for collaboration in recruiting the participants.

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Jansson-Fröjmark, M., Bermås, M. & Kjellén, A. Attentional Bias in Insomnia: The Dot-Probe Task with Pictorial Stimuli Depicting Daytime Fatigue/Malaise. Cogn Ther Res 37, 534–546 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-012-9486-z

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