Recent studies revealed that, while most women diagnosed with and treated for breast cancer experience little longer‐term psychological distress, a subset of affected women report prolonged persistent distress sufficient to substantially impair quality of life. Understanding distress variability following breast cancer diagnosis is essential to identify those at risk for persis-tent distress who might benefit most from therapeutic interventions.
Cognitive theories suggest that bias in attention allocation and stimulus interpretation during information processing (information processing bias) crucially differentiates emotionally vulnerable and nonvulnerable individuals in terms of their initial responses to negative events, as well as subsequent adaptation. We therefore conducted a cross-sectional study to examine if bias in attention to and interpretation of cancer‐related stimuli differentiates women with persistent psychological distress from those with low/transient distress following breast cancer.
Our research findings showed that survivors with persistent distress may adopt avoidance strategies to cope with breast cancer. Moreover, breast cancer survivors reporting persistent anxiety may have a tendency to negatively interpret ambiguous information, leading to illness preoccupation. Specifically, when comparing with healthy controls, generalisation of conscious attentional avoidance of non-cancer-related negatively valenced words was only seen among the anxious breast cancer survivors.
Related publication
Lam, W. W., Ng, D., Wong, S., Lee, T. M., Kwong, A., & Fielding, R. (2018). The role of cognitive bias in relation to persistent distress among women diagnosed with breast cancer. Psycho‐oncology, 27(3), 983-989.
Ng, D. W. L., Fielding, R., & Lam, W. W. T. (2020). The Generalization of Conscious Attentional Avoidance in Response to Threat Among Breast Cancer Women With Persistent Distress. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 589088.
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