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Attentional correlates of illness anxiety in a non-clinical sample
G A Vervaeke1, T K Bouman, L R Valmaggia
1Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Groningen, The Netherlands.
Background:
Attentional processes are assumed to play an important role in the maintenance of illness anxiety, although empirical support is relatively scarce.
Methods:
The present study explores the relationship between selective attention (i.e. private body consciousness and symptom reporting), intensive concentration (i.e. attentional control and sustained attention), and illness anxiety in 57 non-clinical subjects.
Results:
Zero-order and multiple correlations suggest that illness anxiety is significantly related to cognitive failures in everyday life and private body consciousness and to a lesser extent to symptom reporting.
Conclusion:
It is concluded that illness anxiety can be partly predicted from specific attentional variables. However, specific operationalizations of attentional parameters seems to determine the existence and magnitude of these relations.