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No Evidence for Unconscious Attentional Bias in People With Clinically Significant Symptoms of Functional
Sarah McKerchar1, Eliza Le Mire1,2, Nicholas Badcock3
1School of Psychology, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia.
Background:
Disorders of gut-brain interaction (DGBIs) present a significant burden on global healthcare systems, yet their underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. Emerging evidence suggests a role for unconscious psychological processes, particularly attention. This study seeks to detect unconscious attention patterns in people meeting DGBI diagnostic criteria using electroencephalographic (EEG) fast periodic visual stimulation (FPVS), a novel passive method offering high temporal resolution.
Methods:
Alongside 20 healthy controls, 22 female psychology students meeting Rome IV criteria for irritable bowel syndrome or functional dyspepsia completed an FPVS task involving symptom-related (oddball), negative (oddball), and neutral (base) nouns, as well as a control condition in which faces were oddballs among reshuffled pixels.
Key Results:
While we detected unconscious discrimination in the control condition, no significant difference in unconscious attention to symptom-related or negative nouns relative to neutral nouns was observed between groups.
Conclusions And Inferences:
In suggesting no basis for unconscious attentional bias in DGBIs, these findings echo research measuring unconscious attention using event-related potentials, but should be replicated using more highly valenced emotional words.
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