Attentional biases in PTSD, adjustment disorder, and prolonged grief disorder: Attentional interference as a potential transdiagnostic feature

In the ICD-11, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), adjustment disorder (AjD), and prolonged grief disorder (PGD) belong together to the new grouping of disorders specifically associated with stress, which are all characterized by intrusive core symptoms. As previous studies suggest that intrusive symptoms are associated with attentional biases, it is plausible that PTSD, AjD, and PGD are characterized by the same attentional biases as a transdiagnostic feature. The present study investigated 90 participants with symptoms of PTSD, AjD, or PGD. Individuals with a subclinical symptom presentation were also able to participate, resulting in an analogue sample with the group labels aPTSD, aAjD, and aPGD. All participants completed a symptom induction task to provoke symptoms related to attentional biases. Subsequently, a visual search task (VST) was implemented. This test assessed reaction times to trials that include stress-related, neutral, and generally negative stimuli. The VST featured an interference and facilitation condition to investigate different types of attentional biases. Findings showed that all groups were characterized by particularly fast reaction times to trials which included stress-related stimuli in the interference condition, which indicates a reversed attentional interference bias. This bias has not been reported before and is perhaps related to an avoidance behavior.