Attentional Bias for Faces in Relation to Severity of Depressive Symptoms: An Eye-Tracking Study

Abstract

Depressive symptoms are associated with attentional bias for negative stimuli. A large body of research of attentional bias in subjects with affective disorders relies heavily on manual reaction time measures that cannot delineate the time course and components of attentional bias precisely. This study proposes to use the eye tracker technology to detect attentional bias for faces in individuals with different severity of depressive symptoms. All participants completed the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II). The eye tracker test included 4 types of facial expressions: neutral, sad, angry and happy. For the attention indexes, it was analyzed: total time for eye events, total fixation duration, ratio of total fixation and eye events, and fixation duration on each face. The free-viewing task was composed of 72 trials. The total test duration was 6 min and 36 s. In total, 31 individuals took part in this study (15 were patients with minimal severity, 5 with mild severity, 6 with moderate and 5 with severe diagnose). The results showed that severe BDI-II participants’ score are significative (p = 0.001) and related to lower faces fixation and total fixation duration on each face (p = 0.001). In additional, a large difference was verified for null events (without fixation at the area of interest) with the severe group (75%). Analysis of data demonstrates the possibility to use this technology in detecting patterns of eye movements related to psychopathology. With that, it is an opportunity to improve diagnosis technics in mental health research and clinical assessment.