Attention biases for positive and negative emotional faces in adjustment disorders : preliminary evidence from an eye-tracking study

Abstract

Cognitive models suggest that attentional biases appear to be involved in the etiology and maintenance of some psychological disorders, like anxiety and depression. Adjustment Disorder (AD) is frequently characterized by these emotional symptoms but no study has been conducted on this field. The aims of this study were to compare the attentional biases of AD patients with a control group and to examine changes in attentional patterns in the clinical group after a CBT treatment was administered. An eye tracker task using emotional faces was administered to 15 AD patients and 15 healthy participants measuring four variables (time to first fixation, first fixation duration, total fixation duration and fixation count). Results did not show attentional bias in the clinical group compared to the control group. However, significant differences were found in the clinical group after the treatment was finished in the total fixation time and fixation count, showing and increase in total time and number of times gazing at happy faces and decreasing the time looking at sad faces in the total fixation time. These results, although preliminary, are encouraging as they suggest attentional changes after a CBT treatment. Limitations like sample size ought to be overcome in future research.