scholarly journals Attentional processing of pain faces and other emotional faces in chronic pain–an eye-tracking study

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (5) ◽  
pp. e0252398
Author(s):  
Janosch A. Priebe ◽  
Claudia Horn-Hofmann ◽  
Daniel Wolf ◽  
Stefanie Wolff ◽  
Michael Heesen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Chronic Pain ◽  
Visual Attention ◽  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Attentional Bias ◽  
Fixation Duration ◽  
Attentional Processing ◽  
Emotional Faces ◽  
Fixation Durations ◽  
Neutral Face ◽  
Fixation Probabilities

Altered attentional processing of pain-associated stimuli–which might take the form of either avoidance or enhanced vigilance–is thought to be implicated in the development and maintenance of chronic pain. In contrast to reaction time tasks like the dot probe, eye tracking allows for tracking the time course of visual attention and thus differentiating early and late attentional processes. Our study aimed at investigating visual attention to emotional faces in patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain (N = 20) and matched pain-free controls (N = 20). Emotional faces (pain, angry, happy) were presented in pairs with a neutral face for 2000 ms each. Three parameters were determined: First fixation probabilities, fixation durations (overall and divided in four 500 ms intervals) and a fixation bias score as the relative fixation duration of emotional faces compared to neutral faces. There were no group differences in any of the parameters. First fixation probabilities were lower for pain faces than for angry faces. Overall, we found longer fixation duration on emotional compared to neutral faces (‘emotionality bias’), which is in accord with previous research. However, significant longer fixation duration compared to the neutral face was detected only for happy and angry but not for pain faces. In addition, fixation durations as well as bias scores yielded evidence for vigilant-avoidant processing of pain faces in both groups. These results suggest that attentional bias towards pain-associated stimuli might not generally differentiate between healthy individuals and chronic pain patients. Exaggerated attentional bias in patients might occur only under specific circumstances, e.g., towards stimulus material specifically relating to the specific pain of the patients under study or under high emotional distress.

Visual disgust-elicitors produce an attentional blink independent of contextual and trait-level pathogen avoidance

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paola Perone ◽  
David Vaughn Becker ◽  
Joshua M. Tybur
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Visual Attention ◽  
Attentional Blink ◽  
Attentional Bias ◽  
Visual Stimuli ◽  
Attentional Biases ◽  
Attentional Processing ◽  
Trait Level ◽  
Task Irrelevant ◽  
Pathogen Avoidance

Multiple studies report that disgust-eliciting stimuli are perceived as salient and subsequently capture selective attention. In the current study, we aimed to better understand the nature of temporal attentional biases toward disgust-eliciting stimuli and to investigate the extent to which these biases are sensitive to contextual and trait-level pathogen avoidance motives. Participants (N=116) performed in an Emotional Attentional Blink (EAB) task in which task-irrelevant disgust-eliciting, fear-eliciting, or neutral images preceded a target by 200, 500, or 800 milliseconds (i.e., lag two, five and eight respectively). They did so twice - once while not exposed to an odor, and once while exposed to either an odor that elicited disgust or an odor that did not - and completed a measure of disgust sensitivity. Results indicate that disgust-eliciting visual stimuli produced a greater attentional blink than neutral visual stimuli at lag two and a greater attentional blink than fear-eliciting visual stimuli at both lag two and at lag five. Neither the odor manipulations nor individual differences measures moderated this effect. We propose that visual attention is engaged for a longer period of time following disgust-eliciting stimuli because covert processes automatically initiate the evaluation of pathogen threats. The fact that state and trait pathogen avoidance do not influence this temporal attentional bias suggests that early attentional processing of pathogen cues is initiated independent from the context in which such cues are perceived.

No effect of attachment avoidance on visual disengagement from a romantic partner’s face

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (7) ◽  
pp. 2166-2183
Author(s):  
Shayne Sanscartier ◽  
Jessica A. Maxwell ◽  
Penelope Lockwood
Keyword(s):  
Reaction Time ◽  
Visual Attention ◽  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Romantic Partner ◽  
Saccadic Reaction Time ◽  
Attachment Avoidance ◽  
Emotional Faces ◽  
Attachment Orientations ◽  
Romantic Attachments ◽  
Visual Disengagement

Attachment avoidance (discomfort with closeness and intimacy) has been inconsistently linked to visual disengagement from emotional faces, with some studies finding disengagement toward specific emotional faces and others finding no effects. Although most studies use stranger faces as stimuli, it is likely that attachment effects would be most pronounced in the context of attachment relationships. The present study ( N = 92) combined ecologically valid stimuli (i.e., pictures of romantic partner’s face) with eye-tracking methods to more precisely test whether highly avoidant individuals are faster at disengaging from emotional faces. Unexpectedly, attachment avoidance had no effect on saccadic reaction time, regardless of face type or emotion. Instead, all participants took longer to disengage from romantic partner faces than from strangers’ faces, although this effect should be replicated in the future. Our results suggest that romantic attachments capture visual attention on an oculomotor level, regardless of one’s personal attachment orientations.

scholarly journals Processing of Emotional Faces in Patients with Chronic Pain Disorder: An Eye-Tracking Study

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katrin Elisabeth Giel ◽  
Sarah Paganini ◽  
Irena Schank ◽  
Paul Enck ◽  
Stephan Zipfel ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Chronic Pain ◽  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Pain Disorder ◽  
Chronic Pain Disorder ◽  
Emotional Faces

Attentional processing of emotional faces in schizophrenia: Evidence from eye tracking.

2016 ◽  
Vol 125 (7) ◽  
pp. 894-906 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seon-Kyeong Jang ◽  
Sujin Kim ◽  
Chai-Youn Kim ◽  
Hyeon-Seung Lee ◽  
Kee-Hong Choi
Keyword(s):  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Attentional Processing ◽  
Emotional Faces

scholarly journals The Role of Prediction in Learned Predictiveness

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carla J. Eatherington ◽  
Mark Haselgrove
Keyword(s):  
Visual Attention ◽  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Attentional Bias ◽  
Target Stimulus ◽  
Relative Strength ◽  
Human Participants ◽  
Relevant Outcome

Learning permits even relatively uninteresting stimuli to capture attention if they are established as predictors of important outcomes. Associative theories explain this “learned predictiveness” effect by positing that attention is a function of the relative strength of the association between stimuli and outcomes. In three experiments we show that this explanation is incomplete: learned overt visual-attention is not a function of the relative strength of the association between stimuli and an outcome. In three experiments, human participants were exposed to triplets of stimuli that comprised (i) a target (which defined correct responding), (ii) a stimulus which was perfectly correlated with the presentation of the target and (iii) a stimulus which was uncorrelated with the presentation of the target. Participants’ knowledge of the associative relationship between the correlated/uncorrelated stimuli and the target was always good. However, eye-tracking revealed that an attentional bias towards the correlated stimulus only developed when it AND target-relevant responding preceded the target stimulus. We propose a framework in which attentional changes are modulated during learning as a function the relative strength of the association between stimuli and the task-relevant response, rather than an association between stimuli and the task-relevant outcome.

scholarly journals The Crowd Emotion Amplification Effect

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amit Goldenberg ◽  
Erika Weisz ◽  
Timothy Sweeny ◽  
Mina Cikara ◽  
James Gross
Keyword(s):  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Attentional Bias ◽  
Exposure Time ◽  
Emotional Response ◽  
Public Speaking ◽  
Effect Study ◽  
Time Study ◽  
Emotional Faces ◽  
Amplification Effect ◽  
Crowd Emotion

How do people go about reading a room or taking the temperature of a crowd? When people catch a brief glimpse of an array of faces, they can only focus their attention on some of the faces. We propose that perceivers preferentially attend to faces exhibiting strong emotions, and that this generates a crowd emotion amplification effect—estimating a crowd’s average emotional response as more extreme than it is. Study 1 (N = 50) documents the crowd amplification effect. Study 2 (N = 50) replicates the effect even when we increase exposure time. Study 3 (N = 50) uses eye-tracking to show that attentional bias to emotional faces drives amplification. These findings have important implications for many domains in which individuals have to make snap judgments regarding a crowd’s emotionality, from public speaking to controlling crowds.

How do People look at Pictures of Pigs? Analyzing Fixation Duration Depending on Pig Expression and Barn Type using Eye-Tracking

2020 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 300-310
Author(s):  
Sarah Gauly ◽  
Gesa Busch ◽  
Achim Spiller ◽  
Ulrich Enneking ◽  
Susanne Kunde ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Facial Expression ◽  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Information Search ◽  
Fixation Duration ◽  
Farm Animals ◽  
Fixation Durations ◽  
New Finding ◽  
Areas Of Interest

Using eye-tracking, this study investigates fixation duration of students viewing pictures of pigs, which systematically vary in the facial expression of the pig and in the barn setting. The aim of this study is to analyze which picture elements are viewed and for how long, as well as how fixation times vary with a change of the expression of the pig and the barn type. The results show clear effects of picture composition: pig expression and pen type affect fixation durations of different areas of interest with the influence of the pig being considerably larger. Face regions are viewed longer in the “happy” pig, while floor/bedding and the eyes are viewed longer in pictures showing the “unhappy” pig which might be a hint for information search. The power of facial expressions, also for the depiction of farm animals, is a new finding of this paper, which might be of importance when selecting agricultural pictures for different purposes.

scholarly journals Chronic Pain Patients’ Gaze Patterns toward Pain-Related Information: Comparison between Pictorial and Linguistic Stimuli

Medicina ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 55 (9) ◽  
pp. 530 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee ◽  
Beom ◽  
Choi ◽  
Lee ◽  
Lee
Keyword(s):  
Chronic Pain ◽  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Attentional Bias ◽  
Pain Catastrophizing ◽  
Pain Clinic ◽  
Related Information ◽  
Chronic Pain Patients ◽  
Attentional Engagement ◽  
Pain Patients

Background and Objectives: The attentional bias and information processing model explained that individuals who interpret pain stimuli as threatening may increase their attention toward pain-related information. Previous eye tracking studies found pain attentional bias among individuals with chronic pain; however, those studies investigated this phenomenon by using only one stimulus modality. Therefore, the present study investigated attentional engagement to pain-related information and the role of pain catastrophizing on pain attentional engagement to pain-related stimuli among chronic pain patients by utilizing both linguistic and visual stimulus. Materials and Methods: Forty chronic pain patients were recruited from the rehabilitation center, the back pain clinic, and the rheumatology department of Chung-Ang University Hospital in Seoul, Korea. Patients observed pictures of faces and words displaying pain, presented simultaneously with neutral expressions, while their eye movements were measured using the eye tracking system. A t-test and ANOVA were conducted to compare stimulus pairs for the total gaze duration. Results revealed that chronic pain patients demonstrated attentional preference toward pain words but not for pain faces. An ANOVA with bias scores was conducted to investigate the role of pain catastrophizing on attentional patterns. Results indicated that chronic pain patients with high pain catastrophizing scores gazed significantly longer at pain- and anger-related words than neutral words compared to those with low pain catastrophizing scores. The same patterns were not observed for the facial expression stimulus pairs. Conclusions: The results of the present study revealed attentional preference toward pain-related words and the significant role of pain catastrophizing on pain attentional engagement to pain-related words. However, different patterns were observed between linguistic and visual stimuli. Clinical implications related to use in pain treatment and future research suggestions are discussed.

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