Attentional reactions to an MI: The impact of mood state, worry, and coping style

This study investigated the possible development of an attentional bias to cardiac-related words in subjects who recently experienced a myocardial inf arction (MI). It was hypothesized that cardiae-related stimuli would have a ttention-capturing characteristics for post-MI subjects, and this bias woul d be moderated by level of anxiety, degree of cardiac-related worry, and th e subject's coping style. Post-MI subjects (n=33) and matched controls (n=3 1) participated in an attentional search task. The post-MI subjects failed to show the predicted group increases in attention allocated to cardiac sti muli, but a difference between groups still occurred as the control group e xhibited directed inattention to cardiac stimuli. Subsequent analysis indic ated those post-MI subjects who did evince an attentional bias toward cardi ac stimuli had higher monitoring scores on a self-report measure of coping style. Level of emotional distress and cardiac-related worry failed to pred ict attentional bias for the post-MI subjects. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science In c.