Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

• Reyhaneh Akbari ¹
• Fateme Dehghani-Arani ¹
• Mohsan Honar ²
• Nazila Shahmansouri ³
• Ehsan Rezayat ⁴

¹ Department of Psychology, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

² Department of Cognitive Sciences, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

³ Department of Psychiatry, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

⁴ Department of Cognitive Sciences, Faculty of Psychology and Education, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

The present cross-sectional and comparative study aimed to investigate and compare attentional bias towards bodily symptoms in patients with irritable bowel syndrome referring to clinics, high-anxiety individuals, and healthy individuals residing in Tehran in the year 2024. A convenient sample of 15 IBS patients, 15 high-anxiety individuals, and 15 healthy individuals was selected. The instruments used included the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, Beck Depression Inventory, Irritable Bowel Syndrome Severity Scale, and a computerized Dot-Probe task with a stimulus presentation duration of 500 milliseconds. Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) revealed that IBS patients, in comparison to the healthy group, showed a significant attentional avoidance towards bloating-related stimuli (p=0.013), but this difference was not observed for pain-related stimuli. Furthermore, IBS patients generally exhibited a slower overall reaction time compared to the healthy group (p=0.024). The findings indicate that attentional bias in irritable bowel syndrome manifests as selective avoidance of specific bodily cues, suggesting an independent role for the gut-brain axis in cognitive-emotional processing.

Keywords

• Hypervigilance
• Attentional Bias
• Irritable Bowel Syndrome
• Gut-Brain Axis