Selective attention for cardiac information in panic patients

With various reaction time paradigms, panic patients have been shown to hav e selective attention for threatening sensations. However, almost all of th ese paradigms use words describing sensations and not the threatening sensa tions themselves. To increase the ecological validity, in the current study selective attention for heartbeat information was measured with a paradigm derived from the dot probe detection task but using 'real' heartbeat infor mation instead of words. The results indeed showed selective attention for ECG information in panic patients. However, an accelerated ECG did not attr act the attention of panic patients more than a slower EGG. Against expecta tion, both panic patients and normal controls shifted their attention away from an accelerated EGG. Possible explanations are explored. (C) 1999 Elsev ier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.