Attentional and affective processing of sexual stimuli in women with hypoactive sexual desire disorder

Abstract

Hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD) is the most common sexual problem in women. From an incentive motivationperspective, HSDDmaybetheresultofaweakassociation between sexual stimuli and rewarding experiences.As a consequence, these stimuli may either lose or fail to acquire a positive meaning, resulting in a limited number of incentives that have the capacity to elicit a sexual response. According to current information processingmodels of sexual arousal, sexual stimuli automatically activatemeanings and if these are not predominantly positive, processes relevant to the activation of sexual arousal and desire may be interrupted. Premenopausal U.S. and Dutch women with acquired HSDD (n=42) and a control group of sexually functionalwomen (n=42) completed a single target Implicit Association Task and a Picture Association Task assessing automatic affective associations with sexual stimuli and a dot detection task measuring attentional capture by sexual stimuli. Results showed that women with acquired HSDD displayed less positive (but not more negative) automatic associations with sexual stimuli than sexually functionalwomen. Thesamepatternwasfoundfor self-reportedaffective sex-related associations. Participants were slower to detect targets in the dot detection task that replaced sexual images, irrespective of sexual function status. As such, the findings point to the relevance of affective processing of sexual stimuli in women with HSDD, and imply that the treatment of HSDD might benefit from a stronger emphasisonthestrengtheningof theassociationbetween sexual stimuli and positive meaning and sexual reward. © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012.