Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2025 Jan;47(1):32-38.
doi: 10.1177/02537176241236018. Epub 2024 Mar 31.

Information Processing Biases and Attachment Styles in Adolescents with Dissociative Disorders

Ritwika Nag  1 , Nishant Goyal  2 , Madhumita Bhattacharyya  1
Affiliations

Information Processing Biases and Attachment Styles in Adolescents with Dissociative Disorders

Ritwika Nag et al. Indian J Psychol Med. 2025 Jan.

Abstract

Background: Dissociative disorders invade and interfere with the person's continuity of normal psychological functioning and exhibit slower or impaired processing of threat-related information and attachment styles play a significant role in their psychopathology. The present study assessed the type of attachment style and information processing biases and their relationship in adolescents with dissociative disorders.

Methods: This was a hospital-based study, with a cross-sectional design based on purposive sampling. The study consisted of 50 participants between 11 and 17 years of age. Twenty-five of them were adolescents diagnosed with dissociative disorders and 25 were healthy adolescent controls. The Adolescent Dissociative Experiences Scale was used to assess the severity of dissociative disorders in adolescents. Emotional Stroop, Emotion Face dot-probe task and attachment style questionnaires were administered.

Results: Findings suggested an association between the scores in the attachment style dimension of discomfort with closeness and information-processing biases in both the dot-probe and emotional Stroop tasks. There was also an association between the processing bias in the dot-probe task and relationships as a secondary attachment dimension. There was a difference in the two groups of adolescents with dissociative disorders and matched healthy adolescents with respect to the discomfort with closeness attachment style and information-processing bias scores of the dot-probe task.

Conclusion: The study provides interesting insights into how information-processing biases correlate to attachment styles in adolescents with dissociative disorders. Results indicate extensive resources for future management.

Keywords: Adolescents; attachment; dissociation; information-processing.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

References

    1. Srinath S, Girimaji SC, Gururaj G, et al.. Epidemiological study of child & adolescent psychiatric disorders in urban & rural areas of Bangalore, India. Indian J Med Res, 2005; 122(1): 67. - PubMed
    1. Moyon RS, Thomas B, Girimaji SC. Subjective experiences of dissociative and conversion disorders among adolescents in India. Int J Soc Psychiatry, 2022; 68(7): 1507–1515. - PubMed
    1. American Psychiatric Association DS, American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders: DSM-5. Washington, DC: AmericanC: American: American Psychiatric Association; 2013.
    1. Spiegel D, Loewenstein RJ, Lewis-Fernández R, et al.. Dissociative disorders in DSM-5. Depress Anxiety, 2011; 28(12): E17–E45. - PubMed
    1. Hart OVD, Dorahy MJ. History of the concept of dissociation. In: Dissociation and the dissociative disorders. England: Routledge; 2022. p. 13–38.

LinkOut - more resources