Selective attention for hyperventilatory sensations in panic disorder.

According to cognitive theories, panic patients are assumed to display selective attention for feared bodily sensations. To date there has only been indirect evidence for this based on performance on reaction time tasks such as the modified Stroop task and the dot probe detection task. In the present study a more direct attempt was made to investigate whether panic patients show selective attention for feared sensations, in particular hyperventilatory sensations. A group of patients with panic disorder and a group of normal controls were compared on their performance on a reaction time task in which tones of different length had to be discriminated. During the task subjects were asked either to hyperventilate, to overbreathe under isocapnic conditions, or to make a neutral movement. No evidence for selective attention for hyperventilatory sensations was found. The article also discusses whether lack of finding interference during hyperventilation might be due to methodological issues.