ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Health Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1564359
Interpretation Bias Among Breast Cancer Patients with Post-traumatic Stress Symptoms
Provisionally accepted
- 1Weifang University, Weifang, China
- 2AFFILIATED HOSPITAL OF SHANDONG SECOND MEDICAL UNIVERSITY, weifang, China
- 3Shandong Second Medical University, weifang, China
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Background: This study aimed to investigate interpretation bias in breast cancer patients exhibiting post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS), which may affect their cognitive and emotional processing of ambiguous stimuli. Understanding this bias could help inform interventions to address cognitive distortions in this population.Methods: A total of 234 breast cancer patients were assessed for PTSS using the Impact of Event Scale (IES). Based on their PTSS status, 40 participants were randomly selected from both PTSS-positive and PTSS-negative groups, resulting in 80 participants. All participants completed an ambiguous facial expression judgment task.The PTSS group showed significantly higher proportions of "sad" judgments and longer reaction times than the non-PTSS group across all levels of facial expression ambiguity, suggesting increased cognitive load when interpreting ambiguous emotional stimuli.Breast cancer patients with PTSS exhibit a marked negative interpretation bias, which may exacerbate cognitive distortions. These findings highlight the importance of addressing interpretation biases in therapeutic interventions for this population.
Keywords: breast cancer, post-traumatic stress symptoms, interpretation bias, cognitive bias, Facial expression judgment
Received: 21 Jan 2025; Accepted: 19 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wang, Liu, Liu, Han, Teng and Chen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Miaomiao Wang, Weifang University, Weifang, China
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