Attention to Emotional Images in Previously Depressed Individuals: An Eye-Tracking Study

Abstract

Depression and dysphoria are associated with attention and memory biases for emotional information (Williams et al. 1997; Yiend in Cogn Emot 24:3-47, 2010), which are postulated to reflect stable vulnerability factors for the development and recurrence of depression (Gotlib and Joormann in Annu Rev Clin Psychol 6:285-312, 2010). The present study looked for evidence of attention and memory biases in individuals with a self-reported history of depression, compared to individuals with dysphoria and individuals with no history of depression. Participants viewed sets of depression-related, anxiety-related, positive, and neutral images while their eye fixations were tracked and recorded. Incidental recognition of the images was assessed 7 days later. Consistent with previous studies (Kellough et al. in Behav Res Therapy 46:1238-1243 Sears et al. in Cogn Emot 24:1349-1368, 2010, dysphoric individuals spent significantly less time attending to positive images than never depressed individuals, and it was also found that previously depressed individuals exhibited the same attentional bias. Previously depressed individuals also attended to anxiety-related images more than never depressed individuals. A bias in the initial orienting of attention was observed, with previously depressed and dysphoric individuals orienting to depression-images more frequently than never depressed participants. The recognition memory data showed that previously depressed and dysphoric individuals had poorer memory than never depressed individuals, but there was no evidence of a memory bias for either group. Implications for cognitive models of depression and depression vulnerability are discussed.

Attentional bias temporal dynamics in remitted depression.

“…Partly consistent with theory, Sears and colleagues (2011) found that RMDs (N=15) oriented their overt attention (eye-tracking data) to depression-related stimuli more than NDCs (N=38), although they did not orient their attention differently to positive stimuli; RMDs did however express fewer fixations and shorter overall fixation time on positive stimuli compared to NDCs. Yet, RMDs did not make more fixations or express longer overall fixation time on depression-related stimuli than NDCs (Sears, Newman, Ference, & Thomas, 2011). However, other eye-tracking research reported that current depression (N=21), but not RMD (N=21), was associated with a loss of elaborative overt attentional processing of positive stimuli that characterizes healthy controls (N=21) (Isaac, Vrijsen, Rinck, Speckens, & Becker, 2014).…”

Attentional biases toward emotional images in the different episodes of bipolar disorder: An eye-tracking study

“…Regarding the nature of emotional biases in individuals with BD, the biases toward happy and sad images were statedependent. On the one hand, similarly to MDD patients (Kellough et al, 2008;Leyman et al, 2011;Sears et al, 2010Sears et al, , 2011Ellis et al, 2011), BD patients in the depressive phase paid less attention to the happy images than the control group, as deduced from the fixation time and the fixation frequency found for these images. On the other hand, although BD patients in the depressive phase paid more attention to sad images than the healthy controls in percent of fixations (27% versus 25%, respectively), this difference did not reach statistical significance-this difference was significant in previous eye-tracking studies in individuals with MDD (Eizenman et al, 2003;Kellough et al, 2008).…”

“…Of particular relevance here is the free-viewing task, in which participants are required to focus on a central fixation point, and then asked to scan/re-scan several stimuli (2-4 stimuli, e.g., images, faces, or words) presented simultaneously, depicting differing valences (happy, sad, threat or neutral) for around 10-30 s. A number of studies assessed the maintenance of attention over the entire trial (e.g., by measuring the total fixation time on each image; see Eizenman et al, 2003;Kellough et al, 2008;Leyman et al, 2011;Sears et al, 2010Sears et al, , 2011Ellis et al, 2011). Depressed individuals attended less to happy stimuli than nondepressed individuals (i.e., an "anhedonic bias" was found; Kellough et al, 2008;Leyman et al, 2011;Sears et al, 2010Sears et al, , 2011Ellis et al, 2011).…”

“…However, no study found differences in the eye-gaze patterns related to threatening stimuli between depressed and non-depressed individuals (Armstrong and Olatunji, 2012). To determine the presence of attentional biases in the earliest stages of information processing, several studies examined the location of first fixation on a particular image (Kellough et al, 2008;Sears et al, 2010Sears et al, , 2011. Moreover, albeit not conclusively, individuals with MDD tended to orient their initial fixation to happy stimuli less frequently than healthy controls (Armstrong and Olatunji, 2012).…”

Protocol for a between-group experimental study examining cultural differences in emotion processing between Malay and Caucasian adults with and without major depressive disorder

“…58 Previous research has shown that those with MDD have difficulties with attention and information processing when an eye tracking device was used. [62][63][64] Future studies can apply this method to investigate if culture influences the way in which adults with MDD process facial emotions. Furthermore, there is a wide range of medical research showing that MDD is linked to inflammatory response.…”