Attentional Bias For Emotional Faces Research Articles

Eye-tracking evidence of a relationship between attentional bias for emotional faces and depression severity in patients with treatment-resistant depression

In a retrospective study, 54 patients with treatment-resistant major depressive disorder (TRD) completed a free-viewing task in which they had to freely explore pairs of faces (an emotional face (happy or sad) opposite to a neutral face). Attentional bias to emotional faces was calculated for early and sustained attention. We observed a significant negative correlation between depression severity as measured by the 10-item Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS) and sustained attention to happy faces. In addition, we observed a positive correlation between depression severity and sustained attention to sad faces. No significant correlation between depression severity and early attention was found for either happy or sad faces. Although conclusions from the current study are limited by the lack of comparison with a control group, the eye-tracking free-viewing task appears to be a relevant, accessible and easy-to-use tool for measuring depression severity through emotional attentional biases in TRD.

Amygdala and cortical gamma-band responses to emotional faces are modulated by attention to valence.

The amygdala might support an attentional bias for emotional faces. However, whether and how selective attention toward a specific valence modulates this bias is not fully understood. Likewise, it is unclear whether amygdala and cortical signals respond to emotion and attention in a similar way. We recorded gamma-band activity (GBA, > 30 Hz) intracranially in the amygdalae of 11 patients with epilepsy and collected scalp recordings from 19 healthy participants. We presented angry, neutral, and happy faces randomly, and we denoted one valence as the target. Participants detected happy targets most quickly and accurately. In the amygdala, during attention to negative faces, low gamma-band activity (LGBA, < 90 Hz) increased for angry compared with happy faces from 160 ms. From 220 ms onward, amygdala high gamma-band activity (HGBA, > 90 Hz) was higher for angry and neutral faces than for happy ones. Monitoring neutral faces increased amygdala HGBA for emotions compared with neutral faces from 40 ms. Expressions were not differentiated in GBA while monitoring positive faces. On the scalp, only threat monitoring resulted in expression differentiation. Here, posterior LGBA was increased selectively for angry targets from 60 ms. The data show that GBA differentiation of emotional expressions is modulated by attention to valence: Top-down-controlled threat vigilance coordinates widespread GBA in favor of angry faces. Stimulus-driven emotion differentiation in amygdala GBA occurs during a neutral attentional focus. These findings align with a multi-pathway model of emotion processing and specify the role of GBA in this process.

Emotion and attention in face processing: Complementary evidence from surface event-related potentials and intracranial amygdala recordings

Face processing is biased by emotional and voluntarily directed attention, both of which modulate processing in distributed cortical areas. The amygdala is assumed to contribute to an attentional bias for emotional faces, although its interaction with directed attention awaits further clarification. Here, we studied the interaction of emotion and attention during face processing via scalp EEG potentials of healthy participants and intracranial EEG (iEEG) recordings of the right amygdala in one patient. Three randomized blocks consisting of angry, neutral, and happy facial expressions were presented, and one expression was denoted as the target category in each block. Happy targets were detected fastest and most accurately both in the group study and by the iEEG patient. Occipital scalp potentials revealed emotion differentiation for happy faces in the early posterior negativity (EPN) around 300 ms after stimulus onset regardless of the target condition. A similar response to happy faces occurred in the amygdala only for happy targets. On the scalp, a late positive potential (LPP, around 600 ms) enhancement for targets occurred for all target conditions alike. A simultaneous late signal in the amygdala was largest for emotional targets. No late signal enhancements were found for neutral targets in the amygdala. Cortical modulations, by contrast, showed both attention-independent effects of emotion and emotion-independent effects of attention. These results demonstrate an attention-dependence of amygdala activity during the processing of facial expressions and partly independent cortical mechanisms.

Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Covert vs. Overt Emotional Face Processing in Dysphoria.

People at risk of developing clinical depression exhibit attentional biases for emotional faces. To clarify whether such effects occur at an early, automatic, or at a late, deliberate processing stage of emotional processing, the present study used high-density electroencephalography during both covert and overt processing of sad, fearful, happy, and neutral expressions in healthy participants with high dysphoria (n = 16) and with low dysphoria (n = 19). A state-of-the-art non-parametric permutation-based statistical approach was then used to explore the effects of emotion, attentional task demands, and group. Behaviorally, participants responded faster and more accurately when overtly categorizing happy faces and they were slower and less accurate when categorizing sad and fearful faces, independent of the dysphoria group. Electrophysiologically, in an early time-window (N170: 140–180 ms), there was a significant main effect for the dysphoria group, with greater negative voltage for the high vs. low dysphoria group over the left-sided temporo-occipital scalp. Furthermore, there was a significant group by emotional interaction, with the high dysphoria group displaying greater negative amplitude N170 for happy than fearful faces. Attentional task demands did not influence such early effects. In contrast, in an intermediate time-window (EPN: 200–400 ms) and in a late time-window (LPP: 500–750 ms) there were no significant main effects nor interactions involving the dysphoria Group. The LPP results paralleled the behavioral results, with greater LPP voltages for sad and fearful relative to happy faces only in the overt task, but similarly so in the two dysphoria groups. This study provides novel evidence that alterations in face processing in dysphoric individuals can be seen at the early stages of face perception, as indexed by the N170, although not in the form of a typical pattern of mood-congruent attentional bias. In contrast, intermediate (EPN) and late (LPP) stages of emotional face processing appear unaffected by dysphoria. Importantly, the early dysphoria effect appears to be independent of the top-down allocation of attention, further supporting the idea that dysphoria may influence a stage of automatic emotional appraisal. It is proposed that it may be a consequence of a shift from holistic to feature-based processing of facial expressions, or may be due to the influence of negative schemas acting as a negative context for emotional facial processing.

Viés Atencional em Faces Emocionais no Transtorno de Personalidade Borderline

O transtorno de personalidade borderline (TPB) tem como uma característica principal uma dificuldade de relacionamento interpessoal. O viés atencional (VA) seria a locação diferencial a estímulos considerados ameaçadores em detrimento a estímulos neutros. Saber se as pessoas com TPB tem um processamento atencional enviesado frente a expressões faciais torna-se relevante para ajudar compreender a psicopatologia e dar foco em intervenções clínicas. Objetivo: Investigar VA em faces emocionais em pessoas com TPB na tarefa dot-probe utilizando o eye tracking. Método: Participaram n=12 pessoas com funcionamento de TPB (grupo clínico) e n=13 com depressão (grupo controle-clínico) que responderam a uma tarefa de dot-probe com faces emocionais nos tempos de 250ms e 1000ms. Resultados: Houve diferenças no tempo de reação para a face emocional de raiva em 250ms, em que grupo clínico foi mais rápido para responder os ensaios do que grupo controle. Em relação ao eye tracking, houve diferenças de grupos, indicando que grupo controle olhou mais para os olhos das faces neutras do que o grupo clínico em ensaios incongruentes. Conclusões: Estudo sugere que há um VA para faces emocionais de raiva em pessoas com TPB em estágio de processamento automático. É sugerido intervenções terapêuticas específicas para TPB.

Face perception without subjective awareness – Emotional expressions guide early gaze behavior in clinically depressed and healthy individuals

BackgroundMajor depressive disorder is associated with attentional biases in the explicit processing of emotional facial expressions. It is unclear if attentional biases for emotional faces also exist at an automatic level of perception. MethodGaze behavior of twenty-nine clinically depressed individuals and twenty-nine gender matched healthy controls was compared in an affective priming task. Happy, neutral, sad, angry, and fearful facial expressions were presented very briefly as primes with forward and backward masking, followed by a neutral expression. Participants’ early gaze behavior on neutral faces was analyzed for the eyes and mouth as areas of interest. Only participants who were subjectively unaware of the emotional prime faces were included in the analyses. ResultsMasked emotional facial expressions elicited early eye movements toward diagnostic features of the face. Both, depressed patients and healthy controls oriented their initial fixation on the face more often to the eye region after the presentation of fearful or sad compared to happy primes. However, depressed patients oriented their gaze generally far less to the eye and mouth region compared to healthy controls. LimitationAwareness of emotional prime faces was assessed by a systematic interview but not by an objective detection task. ConclusionOur data suggest enhanced attentional orienting toward the eye region due to fearful and sad faces in depressed and healthy individuals. In spite of this early expression-specific vigilance, depressed individuals oriented their gaze overall less to the eyes and mouth compared to healthy controls, which might represent an avoidance of facial features.

Attentional bias for emotional faces in depressed and non-depressed individuals: an eye-tracking study.

Current assessment tools for clinicians in mental health evaluation relies mostly on patient self-report and clinician's judgement. Recent studies suggest that affective disorders are correlated to attentional bias for visual information. This study used eye-tracking technology to measure attentional bias for faces in depressed and non-depressed individuals. The experiment was based on a free-viewing task of pair of faces including 4 types of expressions: neutral, sad, happy and angry. 69 individuals took part in this study. All the participants completed the Beck Depression Inventory II (BDI-II) to evaluate the severity of depressive symptoms. The attention indexes were total time for eye events, total fixation duration, ratio of total fixation and eye events, and fixation duration on each face. The results showed that depressed individuals have a significant (p = 0.005) difference in the total time of eye events (302.4±41.2) compared to non-depressed individuals (331.5±39.3) and revealed a tendency to disengage from emotional stimuli with differences in the total fixation in pair of faces. The study demonstrated that the use of eye-tracking is a valuable tool to asses attentional bias and important technology that could be used to improve diagnosis technics.

大学生自尊水平对情绪面孔的注意偏向

大学生自尊水平对情绪面孔的注意偏向

Neurophysiological correlates of attentional bias for emotional faces in socially anxious individuals – Evidence from a visual search task and N2pc

Visual search paradigms have provided evidence for the enhanced capture of attention by threatening faces. Especially in social anxiety, hypervigilance for threatening faces has been found repeatedly across behavioral paradigms, whose reliability however have been questioned recently. In this EEG study, we sought to determine whether the detection of threat (angry faces) is specifically enhanced in individuals with high (HSA) compared to low social anxiety (LSA). In a visual search paradigm, the N2pc component of the event-related brain potential was measured as an electrophysiological indicator of attentional selection. Twenty-one HSA and twenty-one LSA participants were investigated while searching for threatening or friendly targets within an array of neutral faces, or neutral targets within threatening or friendly distractors. Whereas no differences were found in reaction times, HSA showed significant higher detection rates for angry faces, whereas LSA showed a clear ‘happiness bias’. HSA also showed enhanced N2pc amplitudes in response to emotional facial expressions (angry and happy), indicating a general attentional bias for emotional faces. Overall, the results show that social anxiety may be characterized not only by a spatial attentional bias for threatening faces, but for emotional faces in general. In addition, the results further demonstrate the utility of the N2pc component in capturing subtle attentional biases.

Oxytocin enhances attentional bias for neutral and positive expression faces in individuals with higher autistic traits

There is considerable interest in the potential therapeutic role of the neuropeptide oxytocin in altering attentional bias towards emotional social stimuli in psychiatric disorders. However, it is still unclear whether oxytocin primarily influences attention towards positive or negative valence social stimuli. Here in a double-blind, placebo controlled, between subject design experiment in 60 healthy male subjects we have used the highly sensitive dual-target rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) paradigm to investigate whether intranasal oxytocin (40IU) treatment alters attentional bias for emotional faces. Results show that oxytocin improved recognition accuracy of neutral and happy expression faces presented in the second target position (T2) during the period of reduced attentional capacity following prior presentation of a first neutral face target (T1), but had no effect on recognition of negative expression faces (angry, fearful, sad). Oxytocin also had no effect on recognition of non-social stimuli (digits) in this task. Recognition accuracy for neutral faces at T2 was negatively associated with autism spectrum quotient (ASQ) scores in the placebo group, and oxytocin's facilitatory effects were restricted to a sub-group of subjects with higher ASQ scores. Our results therefore indicate that oxytocin primarily enhances the allocation of attentional resources towards faces expressing neutral or positive emotion and does not influence that towards negative emotion ones or non-social stimuli. This effect of oxytocin is strongest in healthy individuals with higher autistic trait scores, thereby providing further support for its potential therapeutic use in autism spectrum disorder.

Attention Control and Attention to Emotional Stimuli in Anxious Children Before and After Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

This study investigated attention control and attentional bias for emotional stimuli in children with anxiety disorders, compared with disorder-free children. Furthermore, it examined the effect of individual cognitive behavioral therapy on these attentional variables in anxious children. Participants included 22 anxious and 20 control children (aged 7–12 years; 50 % female). Attention control was measured using a partial report-by-color task based on the theory of visual attention, which assesses ability to focus on task-relevant information and resist distraction by non-emotional task-irrelevant information. Attentional bias for emotional faces was assessed using a visual probe task with angry, happy, and neutral faces. Anxious and control children were assessed at baseline (pre-treatment) and, in addition, anxious children were re-assessed post-treatment and at 6 months following treatment. Before treatment, children with clinical anxiety showed poorer attention control and greater attentional bias for emotional faces in comparison to control children. Following treatment, anxious children showed a significant reduction in attentional bias for emotional faces, and a trend for improvement in attention control. There was no significant change in attentional bias or attention control between post-treatment and 6-months follow-up assessments. Findings contribute to prior research by showing that clinically anxious children exhibit both increased attention to emotional information and impaired attention control, and that following treatment their attentional bias and attention control are comparable with those of control children. Further research is required to clarify the extent to which changes in attentional functioning relate to the maintenance of anxiety disorders and responsiveness to treatment.

Gaze cuing of attention in snake phobic women: the influence of facial expression.

Only a few studies investigated whether animal phobics exhibit attentional biases in contexts where no phobic stimuli are present. Among these, recent studies provided evidence for a bias toward facial expressions of fear and disgust in animal phobics. Such findings may be due to the fact that these expressions could signal the presence of a phobic object in the surroundings. To test this hypothesis and further investigate attentional biases for emotional faces in animal phobics, we conducted an experiment using a gaze-cuing paradigm in which participants’ attention was driven by the task-irrelevant gaze of a centrally presented face. We employed dynamic negative facial expressions of disgust, fear and anger and found an enhanced gaze-cuing effect in snake phobics as compared to controls, irrespective of facial expression. These results provide evidence of a general hypervigilance in animal phobics in the absence of phobic stimuli, and indicate that research on specific phobias should not be limited to symptom provocation paradigms.

Effects of oxytocin on attention to emotional faces in healthy volunteers and highly socially anxious males.

Background:Evidence suggests that individuals with social anxiety demonstrate vigilance to social threat, whilst the peptide hormone oxytocin is widely accepted as supporting affiliative behaviour in humans.Methods:This study investigated whether oxytocin can affect attentional bias in social anxiety. In a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, within-group study design, 26 healthy and 16 highly socially anxious (HSA) male volunteers (within the HSA group, 10 were diagnosed with generalized social anxiety disorder) were administered 24 IU of oxytocin or placebo to investigate attentional processing in social anxiety. Attentional bias was assessed using the dot-probe paradigm with angry, fearful, happy and neutral face stimuli.Results:In the baseline placebo condition, the HSA group showed greater attentional bias for emotional faces than healthy individuals. Oxytocin reduced the difference between HSA and non-socially anxious individuals in attentional bias for emotional faces. Moreover, it appeared to normalize attentional bias in HSA individuals to levels seen in the healthy population in the baseline condition. The biological mechanisms by which oxytocin may be exerting these effects are discussed.Conclusions:These results, coupled with previous research, could indicate a potential therapeutic use of this hormone in treatment for social anxiety.

The roles of adolescent attentional bias and parental invalidation of sadness in significant illness: A comparison between eating disorders and chronic pain

Biopsychosocial conceptualizations of eating disorders (EDs) suggest the combination of an individual's emotional vulnerability and invalidating environment increases the likelihood of developing pervasive emotion dysregulation, and subsequent use of ED behaviors to regulate emotion (Haynos & Fruzetti, 2011; Safer, Telch, & Chen, 2009). The current study aimed to provide initial support for this model in adolescent EDs, through examining the interaction between an adolescent's emotional vulnerability, indexed by attentional biases for emotions, and an invalidating family environment. Specifically, we examined the ability of this interaction to discriminate youth with EDs from a comparison group of youth with chronic pain diagnoses, who were used to control for the presence of non-specific effects of having any illness. Fifty adolescent girls (25 with EDs and 25 with chronic pain) completed an emotional dot-probe task assessing attentional biases for emotional faces, and parents completed the Emotions as a Child Scale (Magai, 1996; Klimes-Dougan et al., 2007) to assess response to teen emotion. Results showed that teen angry attentional bias moderated the relationship between parental response to sadness and teen ED status: for teens with high attention bias towards angry faces, maladaptive parental response to sadness predicted increased odds of ED status versus chronic pain status.

Age-related differences in attentional bias for emotional faces

ABSTRACTPast research suggests an aging-related positivity effect in orienting to faces. However, these studies have eschewed direct comparison of orienting when positive and negative faces are presented simultaneously, thereby potentially underestimating the degree to which emotional valence influences such effects. In the current study younger and older adults viewed face pairs for 1000 ms, and upon face-pair offset indicated the location of a dot that appeared in the former location of one of the faces, to assess attentional orienting. When shown negative–neutral pairs, both age groups were biased to attend to negative faces, but when shown positive–negative pairs only younger adults showed a bias toward negative; older adults showed a lack of orienting toward either emotional face. Results suggest younger adults have a negativity bias in attention orienting regardless of the valence of nearby stimuli, whereas older adults show an absence of this bias when positive information is present.

Attentional processes and responding to affective faces in youth with borderline personality features

This study examined attentional biases for emotional faces in borderline personality disorder (BPD). Twenty-one outpatient youth (aged 15–24 years) meeting three or more DSM-IV BPD criteria and 20 community-derived participants (aged 15–24 years) with no history of psychiatric problems and not meeting any BPD criteria completed a modified dot-probe task that tested automatic (30ms) and controlled (500ms) stages of information processing. The findings indicate that, compared with healthy controls, youth with borderline features were faster to respond to congruent rather than incongruent fear stimuli. This effect was independent of state anxiety and was observed during the 30ms presentation of fearful faces. There was no significant effect for happy or angry faces. Youth with borderline features were also slower to respond to incongruent rather than paired neutral trials, indicating difficulties in disengaging attention from the perceived threat. Such differences were not found for the healthy controls. Thus, youth with borderline features had an attentional bias for fearful faces that reflected difficulty in disengaging attention from threatening information during pre-conscious stages of attention. This finding extends previous research highlighting the diminished capacity for affect regulation and subsequent engagement in behavioural strategies to avoid distress in BPD. Future research should explore the relationship between information processing, emotion regulation in adult BPD samples.

The time course of attentional bias for emotional faces in anxious children

The present study investigated the time course of attentional bias for angry and happy faces in 50 primary school children (9 to 12 years). That is, the study examined the degree to which an anxiety-related attentional bias was moderated by the duration of threat exposure. Using a visual-probe task, children were shown angry and happy faces paired with neutral ones over two exposure durations: 500 and 1250 ms. Results revealed that higher levels of anxiety were associated with an attentional bias towards angry faces across the 500 ms and 1250 ms exposure durations. There were no effects of children's anxiety or stimulus exposure duration on attentional bias for happy faces. Results are discussed in relation to threat-monitoring versus vigilance-avoidance patterns of attentional bias, and developmental considerations, including comparison with findings from studies of anxiety-related attentional biases in adults.

Attentional Biases for Emotional Faces in Young Children of Mothers with Chronic or Recurrent Depression

Attentional biases for negative stimuli have been observed in school-age and adolescent children of depressed mothers and may reflect a vulnerability to depression. The direction of these biases and whether they can be identified in early childhood remains unclear. The current study examined attentional biases in 5-7-year-old children of depressed and non-depressed mothers. Following a mood induction, children participated in a dot-probe task assessing biases for sad and happy faces. There was a significant interaction of group and sex: daughters of depressed mothers attended selectively to sad faces, while children of controls and sons of depressed mothers did not exhibit biases. No effects were found for happy stimuli. These findings suggest that attentional biases are discernible in early childhood and may be vulnerability markers for depression. The results also raise the possibility that sex differences in cognitive biases are evident before the emergence of sex differences in the prevalence of depression.

Attentional bias for emotional faces in paediatric anxiety disorders: An investigation using the emotional go/no go task

Background The present study examined contextual modulation of attentional control processes in paediatric anxiety disorders. Method Anxious children ( N = 20) and non-anxious controls ( N = 20) completed an emotional Go/No Go task in which they responded on some trials (i.e., Go trials) when neutral faces were presented amongst either angry or happy faces to which children avoided responding (i.e., No Go trials) or when angry and happy faces were presented as Go trials and children avoided responding to neutral faces. Results Anxious girls were slower responding to neutral faces with embedded angry compared with happy face No Go trials whereas non-anxious girls were slower responding to neutral faces with embedded happy versus angry face No Go trials. Anxious and non-anxious boys showed the same basic pattern as non-anxious girls. There were no significant group differences on No Go trials or when the emotional faces were presented as Go trials. Conclusions Results are discussed in terms of selective interference by angry faces in the control of attention in anxious girls.

Attentional Bias for Emotional Faces in Children With Generalized Anxiety Disorder

To examine attentional bias for angry and happy faces in 7- to 12-year-old children with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD; n = 23) and nonanxious controls (n = 25). Children completed a visual probe task in which pairs of face stimuli were displayed for 500 milliseconds and were replaced by a visual probe in the spatial location of one of the faces. Severely anxious children with GAD showed an attentional bias toward both angry and happy faces. Children with GAD with a milder level of anxiety and nonanxious controls did not show an attentional bias toward emotional faces. Moreover, within the GAD group, attentional bias for angry faces was associated with increased anxiety severity and the presence of social phobia. Biased attention toward threat as a function of increased severity in pediatric GAD may reflect differing threat appraisal processes or emotion regulation strategies.