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Background: Eye contact is a fundamental part of social interaction. In clinical studies, it has been observed that patients suffering from depression make less eye contact during interviews than healthy individuals, which could be a factor contributing to their social functioning impairments. Similarly, results from mood induction studies with healthy persons indicate that attention to the eyes diminishes as a function of sad mood. The present screen-based eye-tracking study examined whether depressive symptoms in healthy individuals are associated with reduced visual attention to other persons' direct gaze during free viewing., Methods: Gaze behavior of 44 individuals with depressive symptoms and 49 individuals with no depressive symptoms was analyzed in a free viewing task. Grouping was based on the Beck Depression Inventory using the cut-off proposed by Hautzinger et al. (2006). Participants saw pairs of faces with direct gaze showing emotional or neutral expressions. One-half of the face pairs was shown without face masks, whereas the other half was presented with face masks. Participants' dwell times and first fixation durations were analyzed., Results: In case of unmasked facial expressions, participants with depressive symptoms looked shorter at the eyes compared to individuals without symptoms across all expression conditions. No group difference in first fixation duration on the eyes of masked and unmasked faces was observed. Individuals with depressive symptoms dwelled longer on the mouth region of unmasked faces. For masked faces, no significant group differences in dwell time on the eyes were found. Moreover, when specifically examining dwell time on the eyes of faces with an emotional expression there were also no significant differences between groups. Overall, participants gazed significantly longer at the eyes in masked compared to unmasked faces., Conclusions: For faces without mask, our results suggest that depressiveness in healthy individuals goes along with less visual attention to other persons' eyes but not with less visual attention to others' faces. When factors come into play that generally amplify the attention directed to the eyes such as face masks or emotions then no relationship between depressiveness and visual attention to the eyes can be established., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Background: Clinical depression is characterized by high levels of negative affect (NA) and attenuated positive affect (PA). Psychological and pharmacological treatments have been shown to reduce NA and to enhance PA in depressed patients. Following dual-process models, two types of affect can be distinguished: explicit (or self-reported) affect, which is formed by conscious reflections, and implicit affect, which relates to automatic affective reactions. The present study was conducted to examine, for the first time, both implicit and explicit affectivity in patients suffering from acute depression. Moreover, changes in patients' implicit and explicit affectivity were investigated over the course of inpatient treatment., Methods: Thirty-nine patients suffering from major depression and 39 healthy individuals participated in the study. Implicit affectivity was assessed using the Implicit Positive and Negative Affect Test. The explicit state and trait affectivity were measured by the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule. The level of depressive symptoms was assessed with the Beck Depression Inventory. Tests were administered to patients after admission and after 7 weeks of therapy, whereas healthy controls were investigated only once. We examined whether either comorbidity or antidepressant medication has an effect on affectivity., Results: Patients with acute depression had lower implicit and explicit PA scores and higher implicit and explicit NA scores than the healthy controls. After treatment, patients' level of depression decreased significantly. At posttreatment, patients exhibited heightened implicit and explicit PA and diminished explicit trait NA. Independent of antidepressant medication and comorbidity, no significant change in implicit NA was observed over the course of treatment. Implicit NA was correlated with explicit NA in acute depression but not during recovery., Conclusions: Acute depression appears to be characterized by decreased implicit and explicit PA and increased implicit and explicit NA. After 7 weeks of treatment, depressed patients' implicit and explicit PA increased, and explicit trait NA decreased. No decrease in implicit NA and explicit state NA occurred over the course of treatment. Finally, it seems that in the state of acute depression, the interplay between the automatic and reflective systems could be increased for negative affectivity.

Cognitive theories of depression assume biased attention towards mood-congruent information as a central vulnerability and maintaining factor. Among other symptoms, depression is characterized by excessive negative affect (NA). Yet, little is known about the impact of naturally occurring NA on the allocation of attention to emotional information. The study investigates how implicit and explicit NA as well as self-reported depressive symptoms predict attentional biases in a sample of healthy individuals (N = 104). Attentional biases were assessed using eye-tracking during a free viewing task in which images of sad, angry, happy and neutral faces were shown simultaneously. Participants' implicit affectivity was measured indirectly using the Implicit Positive and Negative Affect Test. Questionnaires were administered to assess actual and habitual explicit NA and presence of depressive symptoms. Higher levels of depressive symptoms were associated with sustained attention to sad faces and reduced attention to happy faces. Implicit but not explicit NA significantly predicted gaze behavior towards sad faces independently from depressive symptoms. The present study supports the idea that naturally occurring implicit NA is associated with attention allocation to dysphoric facial expression. The findings demonstrate the utility of implicit affectivity measures in studying individual differences in depression-relevant attentional biases and cognitive vulnerability., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Background: Major 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.Method: Gaze 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.Results: Masked 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.Limitation: Awareness of emotional prime faces was assessed by a systematic interview but not by an objective detection task.Conclusion: Our 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Major depressive disorder (MDD) has been found to be associated with biased attention to emotional stimuli: increased attention for dysphoric information and/or decreased attention for positive information compared to healthy individuals. A history of childhood maltreatment (CM) has been discussed as a factor that might have an impact on the occurrence and extent of biased attention in depression. The present study examined the association between CM and attention for facial emotions in currently depressed patients using eye-tracking methodology. In a free viewing paradigm, 31 individuals with MDD and 31 healthy subjects viewed images of four facial expressions (happy, sad, angry, and neutral). Dwell time on each facial expression was used as an indicator of attention allocation. Childhood maltreatment was assessed using the German version of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire. Depressed patients showed shorter gaze durations for happy faces compared to healthy controls. This result is in line with the assumption that depression goes along with a loss of elaborative processing of positive stimuli. No group differences were observed concerning dwell times on negative faces. However, CM was associated with reduced attention for angry and sad facial expressions in the depressed sample. Depressed individuals with a history of CM seem to avoid processing of threatening or burdensome stimuli. Early life adversity appears to impact attention allocation in depressed individuals and might help to explain discordant results in the literature regarding biased attention to negative facial expressions in depression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]