Attentional bias in psoriasis: The role of processing time and emotional valence

The present study explored whether people with psoriasis display an attentional bias towards disease-related threat words and whether this bias occurs relatively early during the phase of stimulus disengagement, or during a later maintained attention phase dominated by controlled strategic processes. We also explored the degree to which attentional bias is dependent on the emotional valence of control words.

Individuals with psoriasis and matched controls took part in 4 online experiments. Participants completed a spatial cueing paradigm using disease-related threat words and control words as cues, in order to obtain reaction time estimates of attentional bias.

We did not observe evidence for attentional bias when control words were matched with threat words for emotional valence, regardless of whether processing time for the cues was limited (Experiment 1: SOA = 250 ms) or extended (Experiment 2: SOA = 1050 ms). We also did not observe evidence for attentional bias when control words of positive valence were used, but processing time was limited (Experiment 3). An attentional bias was only observed (p = .012, Cohen's d = .37) when sufficient processing time was available and positively-valanced control words were used (Experiment 4).

Rather than showing large and generalized AB effects as predicted by previous accounts, our results tentatively suggest that AB in psoriasis is restricted to situations where participants have ample processing time and threat words are easily distinguishable from control words on the basis of emotional valence. The pattern of results suggests that attentional bias in psoriasis is best characterized as a relatively slow strategic process.