Hughes, Alicia, Hirsch, Colette, Chalder, Trudie et al. · British journal of health psychology · 2016 · DOI
This review looked at research studies examining how people with ME/CFS pay attention to and interpret information about illness and symptoms. The studies found that some people with ME/CFS tend to notice health-related threats more quickly and interpret their body sensations as signs of illness more readily than healthy people do. These thinking patterns may help keep the fatigue and illness beliefs going, even when other factors aren't actively causing symptoms.
Understanding cognitive biases in ME/CFS helps explain how the mind may contribute to symptom maintenance, independent of the underlying biological dysfunction. This research supports the inclusion of cognitive and attentional factors in comprehensive ME/CFS models and may inform psychological treatment approaches that target how patients attend to and interpret symptoms.
This review does not prove that cognitive biases cause ME/CFS; it only demonstrates that some people with the condition show these biases compared to healthy controls. The review cannot establish whether these biases are a primary driver of symptoms or a secondary consequence of living with a chronic illness. Methodological inconsistencies across studies prevent definitive conclusions about the magnitude or clinical significance of these biases.
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
Hughes, Alicia, Hirsch, Colette, Chalder, Trudie, & Moss-Morris, Rona (2016). Attentional and interpretive bias towards illness-related information in chronic fatigue syndrome: A systematic review.. British journal of health psychology. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjhp.12207
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-hughes-2016-attentional-interpretive,
author = {Hughes, Alicia and Hirsch, Colette and Chalder, Trudie and Moss-Morris, Rona},
title = {Attentional and interpretive bias towards illness-related information in chronic fatigue syndrome: A systematic review.},
journal = {British journal of health psychology},
year = {2016},
doi = {10.1111/bjhp.12207},
note = {PubMed: 27329758},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/hughes-2016-attentional-interpretive},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-30. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/hughes-2016-attentional-interpretive
Contribute
Private, reviewed by a human. Not a public comment thread.