Tactile perceptual processes and their relationship to medically unexplained symptoms and health anxiety

Abstract Objective The Somatic Signal Detection Task (SSDT; Lloyd, Manson, Brown and Poliakoff, 2008) is an innovative paradigm to study perceptual processes related to physical symptoms. It allows examining touch illusions as a laboratory analog of medically unexplained symptoms (MUS) according to the cognitive model of MUS proposed by Brown (2004). The present study compared psychopathologic measures of MUS and health anxiety with SSDT parameters. Furthermore, we aimed to define a reliable measurement of tactile perception threshold. Methods 67 participants of a student population reported whether they detected tactile stimuli at their fingertip which were presented in half of the test tr…