de Gier, Marieke, Oosterman, Joukje M, Hughes, Alicia M et al. · British journal of health psychology · 2024 · DOI
This study looked at whether people with severe fatigue from MS or ME/CFS tend to notice fatigue-related information more readily or interpret unclear physical symptoms in a threatening way compared to healthy people. Researchers found that both MS and ME/CFS patients interpreted ambiguous body sensations as more threatening than healthy controls did, though there was no difference in how they paid attention to fatigue-related words. The way patients interpreted symptoms was linked to how they mentally responded to their symptoms.
Understanding cognitive biases in ME/CFS is important because they may contribute to how symptoms are interpreted and perpetuated. This study directly compares ME/CFS with MS, helping clarify whether threat-related interpretation patterns are shared across severe fatigue conditions or disease-specific, which could inform targeted psychological interventions.
This study does not prove that interpretation bias causes or perpetuates fatigue—only that a correlation exists. It does not establish whether these biases develop as a response to chronic illness or precede it. The finding applies to severely fatigued patients and may not generalize to those with milder ME/CFS symptoms.
About the PEM badge: “PEM required” means post-exertional malaise was an explicit required diagnostic criterion for participant inclusion in this study — not that PEM was studied, observed, or discussed. Studies using criteria that do not require PEM (e.g. Fukuda, Oxford) are tagged “PEM not required”. How the atlas works →
The first block is for the primary paper and is the citation you should use in research work. The atlas-snapshot line only applies if you are specifically referring to this atlas’s reading of the paper on the date shown.
Primary citation
de Gier, Marieke, Oosterman, Joukje M, Hughes, Alicia M, Moss-Morris, Rona, Hirsch, Colette, Beckerman, Heleen, et al. (2024). The presence of attentional and interpretation biases in patients with severe MS-related fatigue.. British journal of health psychology. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjhp.12723
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-de-gier-2024-presence-attentional,
author = {de Gier, Marieke and Oosterman, Joukje M and Hughes, Alicia M and Moss-Morris, Rona and Hirsch, Colette and Beckerman, Heleen and de Groot, Vincent and Knoop, Hans},
title = {The presence of attentional and interpretation biases in patients with severe MS-related fatigue.},
journal = {British journal of health psychology},
year = {2024},
doi = {10.1111/bjhp.12723},
note = {PubMed: 38575519},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/de-gier-2024-presence-attentional},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-30. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/de-gier-2024-presence-attentional
Contribute
Private, reviewed by a human. Not a public comment thread.