Attentional bias in euthymic bipolar I disorder

Abstract

Little is known about the nature of the relation between information-processing biases and affective traits in bipolar disorder. The present study was designed to investigate whether attentional biases are evident in persons diagnosed with bipolar disorder when they are in a positive mood state, and whether biases are related to indices of emotion regulation and to prior history of mood episodes. Ninety adults diagnosed with bipolar I disorder and 81 controls with no lifetime mood disorder underwent a positive mood induction and then completed an emotion face dot-probe task; participants in the bipolar disorder group also completed a self-report measure of responses to positive affect. Attentional bias was not related to a diagnosis of bipolar disorder or to symptom severity. Consistent with hypotheses, analyses within the bipolar group indicated that greater dampening of positive affect related to significantly less attention paid to the positively valenced faces. Discussion focuses on the potential role of affective traits in shaping attentional bias in bipolar disorder.

Keywords:

• Attention bias
• Bipolar disorder
• Cognitive bias
• Dampening

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Daniel Fulford, Christopher Miller, Jennifer Nam, Lori Eisner, Nicole Marquinez, Bailey Smith, Sarah Victor and Meggy Wang for assistance with data collection, Charles Carver for assistance with hypothesis generation, measure development and study oversight, and two anonymous reviewers for many helpful comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Correlations involving bias scores and MHRSD/BRMS scores were conducted both with the original data and with the imputed mood data; the direction and significance of effects were unchanged when imputed scores were used.

² Pre-mood induction mood ratings were missing for 10 participants in the bipolar group and 16 in the control group due to a technology failure. Mood induction analyses are therefore based on 65 control participants and 81 participants with bipolar disorder. The primary ANOVA analysis of dot-probe scores was also repeated within this smaller group; results were entirely parallel to the primary results reported in the manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health under Grant [R01 076021]. Preparation of this manuscript was supported by National Institute of Mental Health Grant [T32 MH089919].