A comparative study on attentional bias between children with asthma and healthy peers with high and low anxiety levels

The prevalence of anxiety disorders in children suffering from chronic diseases, such as asthma, makes it necessary to investigate the underling mechanisms of etiology and continuation of anxiety. Studies on the attentional bias of children with asthma have not only very limited but ended up in mixed results. The present study aims is to compare attentional bias disease-related stimuli and threat in children with asthma and healthy peers.
Sixty-four children, aged 9–12, took part in the study and were recruited into four conditions (asthma/low anxiety, asthma/high anxiety, healthy/low anxiety, and healthy/high anxiety). The research instruments were Spielberger children's trait anxiety test and researcher made visual Dot-probe task. Data were analyzed using unifactor and multifactor analysis of variance.
There was a significant difference in illness and negative emotions components between groups (P<0.05) but no significant difference was found in the asthma component between groups (P>0.05). Also, there was no significant difference between the severity of asthma and three components of attentional bias in the groups (P>0.05).
Findings showed that children with asthma and anxiety show vigilant towards illness and negative emotional stimuli. The results of this research can identify mediating factors and underlying mechanisms of psychological and physical variables and can be effective for intervening protocols to reduce the anxiety of children with asthma and other chronic diseases