Eye tracking of attention in the affective disorders: A meta-analytic review and synthesis

Clinical Psychology Review

Volumn 32, Issue 8, 2012, Pages 704-723

  Armstrong, Thomas ^a   Olatunji, Bunmi O ^a  

^a VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Anxiety; Attention; Bias; Depression; Eye movements; Eye Tracking

Indexed keywords

ALERTNESS; ANXIETY DISORDER; DEPRESSION; DISTRACTIBILITY; DYSPHORIA; EMOTION; EYE TRACKING; GAZE; HUMAN; HYPOTHESIS; MEDLINE; META ANALYSIS (TOPIC); METHODOLOGY; MOOD DISORDER; POSTTRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER; PSYCINFO; REVIEW; SAMPLE SIZE; STATISTICAL ANALYSIS; VISUAL STIMULATION;

ANXIETY DISORDERS; AROUSAL; ATTENTION; DEPRESSIVE DISORDER; EMOTIONS; EYE MOVEMENTS; FACIAL EXPRESSION; FIXATION, OCULAR; HUMANS; PATTERN RECOGNITION, VISUAL; REACTION TIME;

EID: 84867076144     PISSN: 02727358     EISSN: 18737811     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/j.cpr.2012.09.004     Document Type: Review

References (129)

1. Acunzo D.J., Henderson J.M. No emotional "pop-out" effect in natural scene viewing. Emotion 2011, 11:1134-1143.
2. Algom D., Chajut E., Lev S. A rational look at the emotional Stroop phenomenon: A generic slowdown, not a Stroop effect. Journal of Experimental Psychology. General 2004, 133:323-338.
3. Ansari T.L., Derakshan N. The neural correlates of impaired inhibitory control in anxiety. Neuropsychologia 2011, 49:1146-1153.
4. Ansari T.L., Derakshan N. The neural correlates of cognitive effort in anxiety: Effects on processing efficiency. Biological Psychology 2011, 86:337-348.
5. Armstrong T., Olatunji B.O., Sarawgi S., Simmons C. Orienting and maintenance of gaze in contamination fear: Biases for disgust and fear cues. Behaviour Research and Therapy 2010, 48:402-408.
6. Armstrong T., Sarawgi S., Olatunji B.O. Attentional bias towards threat in contamination fear: Overt components and behavioral correlates. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 2012, 131:232-237.
7. Armstrong T., Zald D.H., Olatunji B.O. Attention control in OCD and GAD: Specificity and associations with core cognitive symptoms. Behaviour Research and Therapy 2011, 49:756-762.
8. Baert S., De Raedt R., Schacht R., Koster E.H.W. Attention bias training in depression: Therapeutic effects depend on depression severity. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry 2010, 41:265-274.
9. Bannerman R.L., Milders M.V., Sahraie A. Processing emotional stimuli: Comparison of saccadic and manual choice-reaction times. Cognition and Emotion 2009, 23:930-954.
10. Bar-Haim Y., Lamy D., Pergamin L., Bakermans-Kranenburg M.J., van IJzendoorn M.H. Threat-related attentional bias in anxious and non-anxious individuals: A meta-analytic study. Psychological Bulletin 2007, 133:1-24.
11. Beck A.T. Cognitive therapy and the emotional disorders 1976, International Universities Press, New York.
12. Becker M.W. Panic search: Fear produces efficient visual search for non-threatening objects. Psychological Science 2009, 20:435-437.
13. Becker E.S., Rinck M., Margraf J., Roth W.T. The emotional Stroop effect in anxiety disorders: General emotionality or disorder specificity?. Journal of Anxiety Disorders 2001, 15:147-159.
14. Beevers C.G., Lee H.-J., Wells T.T., Ellis A.J., Telch M.J. Eye gaze bias for emotion stimuli prospectively predicts PTSD, depression, and anxiety among soldiers deployed in Iraq. The American Journal of Psychiatry 2011, 168:735-741.
15. Berggren, N., & Derakshan, N. (in press). Attentional control deficits in anxiety: Why you see them and why you don't. Biological Psychology. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2012.03.007.
16. Bishop S.J. Trait anxiety and impoverished prefrontal control of attention. Nature Neuroscience 2009, 12:92-98.
17. Borenstein M.J., Hedges L.V., Higgins J.P.T., Rothstein H.R. Comprehensive meta-analysis (version 2) 2005, Biostat, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
18. Bradley B.P., Mogg K., Millar N.H. Covert and overt orienting of attention to emotion faces in anxiety. Cognition and Emotion 2000, 14:789-808.
19. Broomfield N.M., Turpin G. Covert and overt attention in trait anxiety: A cognitive psychophysiological analysis. Biological Psychology 2005, 68:179-200.
20. Buckner J.D., Maner J.K., Schmidt N.B. Difficult disengaging attention from social threat in social anxiety. Cognitive Therapy and Research 2010, 34:99-105.
21. Calvo M.G., Avero P. Time course of attentional bias to emotional scenes in anxiety: Gaze direction and duration. Cognition and Emotion 2005, 19:433-451.
22. Calvo M.G., Lang P.J. Parafoveal semantic processing of emotional visual scenes. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Human Perception and Performance 2005, 31:502-519.
23. Calvo M.G., Nummenmaa L. Processing of unattended emotional visual scenes. Journal of Experimental Psychology General 2007, 136:347-369.
24. Calvo M.G., Nummenmaa L., Hyönä J. Emotional scenes in peripheral vision: Selective orienting and gist processing, but not content identification. Emotion 2008, 8:68-80.
25. Caseras X., Garner M., Bradley B.P., Mogg K. Biases in visual orienting to negative and positive scenes in dysphoria: An eye movement study. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 2007, 116:491-497.
26. Cavanagh J., Geisler M.W. Mood effects on the ERP processing of emotional intensity in faces: a P3 investigation with depressed students. International Journal of Psychophysiology 2006, 60:27-33.
27. Cisler J.M., Bacon A.K., Williams N.L. Phenomenological characteristics of attentional biases towards threat: A critical review. Cognitive Therapy and Research 2009, 33:221-234.
28. Cisler J.M., Koster E.H.W. Mechanisms of attentional biases towards threat in anxiety disorders: An integrative review. Clinical Psychology Review 2010, 30:203-216.
29. Clark L.A., Watson D. Tripartite model of anxiety and depression: psychometric evidence and taxonomic implications. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 1991, 100:316-336.
30. Cohen J. Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences 1988, Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ. 2nd ed.
31. Cooper H., Hedges L.V. The handbook of research synthesis 1994, Russell Sage Foundation, New York.
32. Corbetta M., Shulman G.L. Control of goal-directed and stimulus-driven attention in the brain. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 2002, 3:201-215.
33. Deldin P.J., Deveney C.M., Kim A.S., Casas B.R., Best J.L. A slow wave investigation of working memory biases in mood disorders. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 2001, 110:267-281.
34. De Lissnyder, Derakshan N., De Raedt R., Koster E.H.W. Depressive symptoms and attentional control in a mixed antisaccade task: The specific effects of rumination. Cognition & Emotion. 2011, 25:886-897.
35. Derakshan N., Ansari T.L., Shoker L., Hansard M.E., Eysenck M.W. Anxiety, inhibition, efficiency, and effectiveness: An investigation using the antisaccade task. Experimental Psychology 2009, 56:48-55.
36. Derakshan N., Koster E.H.W. Processing efficiency in anxiety: Evidence from eye-movements during visual search. Behaviour Research and Therapy 2010, 46:1180-1185.
37. Derakshan N., Salt M., Koster E.H. Attentional control in depression: An investigation using the antisaccade task. Biological Psychology 2009, 80:251-255.
38. Derryberry D., Reed M.A. Anxiety-related attentional biases and their regulation by attentional control. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 2002, 2:225-236.
39. Devue C., Belopolsky A.V., Theeuwes J. The role of fear and expectancies in capture of covert attention by spiders. Emotion 2011, 11:768-775.
40. Downing P.E. Interactions between visual working memory and selective attention. Psychological Science 2000, 11:467-473.
41. Eizenman M., Yu L.H., Grupp L., Eizenman E., Ellenbogen M., Gemar M., et al. A naturalistic vision scanning approach to assess selective attention in major depressive disorder. Psychiatry Research 2003, 118:117-128.
42. Ellis A.J., Beevers C.G., Wells T.T. Attention allocation and incidental recognition of emotional information in dysphoria. Cognitive Therapy and Research 2011, 35:425-433.
43. Eysenck M.W., Derakshan N., Santos R., Calvo M. Anxiety and cognitive performance: Attentional control theory. Emotion 2007, 7:336-353.
44. Felmingham K.L., Rennie C., Manor B., Bryant R.A. Eye tracking and physiological reactivity to threatening stimuli in posttraumatic stress disorder. Journal of Anxiety Disorders 2011, 25:668-673.
45. Findlay J.M., Gilchrist I.D. Active vision: The psychology of looking and seeing 2003, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
46. Foa E.B., McNally R.J. Sensitivity to feared stimuli in obsessive-compulsives: A dichotic listening analysis. Cognitive Therapy and Research 1986, 10:477-485.
47. Fox E., Derakshan N., Shoker L. Trait anxiety modulates the electrophysiological indices of rapid spatial orienting towards angry faces. Neuroreport 2008, 19:259-263.
48. Fox E., Russo R., Bowles R., Dutton K. Do threatening stimuli draw or hold visual attention in subclinical anxiety?. Journal of Experimental Psychology. General 2001, 130:681-700.
49. Fox E., Russo R., Dutton K. Attentional bias for threat: Evidence for delayed disengagement from emotional faces. Cognition and Emotion 2002, 16:355-379.
50. Gamble A., Rapee R. The time-course of attention to emotional faces in social phobia. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry 2010, 41:39-44.
51. Garner M., Mogg K., Bradley B.P. Orienting and maintenance of gaze to facial expressions in social anxiety. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 2006, 115:760-770.
52. Gerdes A.B.M., Alpers G.W., Pauli P. When spiders appear suddenly: Spider-phobic patients are distracted by task-irrelevant spiders. Behaviour Research and Therapy 2008, 46:174-187.
53. Gotlib I.H., McCann C.D. Construct accessibility and depression: An examination of cognitive and affective factors. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1984, 47:427-439.
54. Hallion L.S., Ruscio A.M. A meta-analysis of the effect of cognitive bias modification on anxiety and depression. Psychological Bulletin 2011, 137:940-958.
55. Harris L.M., Menzies R.G. Changing attentional bias: Can it affect self-reported anxiety?. Anxiety, Stress, and Coping 1998, 11:167-179.
56. Hayhoe M., Ballard D. Eye movements in natural behavior. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 2005, 9:188-193.
57. Hedges L.V. Distribution theory for Glass's estimator of effect size and related estimators. Journal of Educational Statistics 1981, 6:107-128.
58. Hedges L.V., Olkin I. Statistical methods for meta-analysis 1985, Academic Press, Orlando, FL.
59. Hermans D., Vansteenwegen D., Eelen P. Eye movement registration as a continuous index of attention deployment: Data from a group of spider anxious students. Cognition and Emotion 1999, 13:419-434.
60. Higgins J.P.T., Thompson S.G. Quantifying heterogeneity in a meta-analysis. Statistics in Medicine 2002, 21:1539-1558.
61. Horley K., Williams L.M., Gonsalvez C., Gordon E. Social phobics do not see eye to eye: A visual scanpath study of emotional expression processing. Journal of Anxiety Disorders 2003, 17:33-44.
62. Horley K., Williams L.M., Gonsalvez C.J., Gordon E. Face to face: Visual scanpath evidence for abnormal processing of facial expressions in social phobia. Psychiatry Research 2004, 127:43-53.
63. Joormann J., Gotlib I.H. Updating the contents of working memory in depression: Interference from irrelevant negative material. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 2008, 117:206-213.
64. Kellough J.L., Beevers C.G., Ellis A.J., Wells T.T. Time course of selective attention in clinically depressed young adults: An eye tracking study. Behaviour Research and Therapy 2008, 46:1238-1243.
65. Kimble M.O., Fleming K., Bandy C., Kim J., Zambetti A. Eye tracking and visual attention to threating stimuli in veterans of the Iraq war. Journal of Anxiety Disorders 2010, 24:293-299.
66. Klumpp H., Amir H. Preliminary study of attention training to threat and neutral faces on anxious reactivity to a social stressor in social anxiety. Cognitive Therapy and Research 2010, 34:263-271.
67. Koster E.H.W., Baert S., Bockstaele M., De Raedt R. Attentional retraining procedures: Manipulating early or late components of attentional bias?. Emotion 2010, 10:230-236.
68. Koster E.H.W., De Lissnyder E., Derakshan N., De Raedt R. Understanding depressive rumination from a cognitive science perspective: The impaired disengagement hypothesis. Clinical Psychology Review 2011, 31:138-145.
69. Koster E.H.W., Verschuere B., Crombez G., Van Damme S. Time-course of attention for threatening pictures in high and low trait anxiety. Behaviour Research and Therapy 2005, 43:1087-1098.
70. Lange W.G., Heuer K., Langner O., Keijsers G.P.J., Becker E.S., Rinck M. Face value: Eye movements and the evaluation of facial crowds in social anxiety. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry 2011, 42:355-363.
71. Lange W.G., Tierney K.J., Reinhardt-Rutland A.H., Vivekananda-Schmidt P. Viewing behaviour of spider phobics and non-phobics in the presence of threat and safety stimuli. British Journal of Clinical Psychology 2004, 43:235-243.
72. LeDoux J.E. Emotion circuits in the brain. Annual Reviews Neuroscience 2000, 23:155-184.
73. Levens S.M., Gotlib I.H. Updating positive and negative stimuli in working memory in depression. Journal of Experimental Psychology. General 2010, 139:654-664.
74. Leyman L., De Raedt R., Vaeyens R., Phillipaerts R. Attention for emotional facial expressions in dysphoria: An eye-movement registration study. Cognition and Emotion 2011, 25:111-120.
75. MacLeod C., Mathews A., Tata P. Attentional bias in emotional disorders. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 1986, 95:15-20.
76. McCabe S.B., Gotlib I.H. Selective attention and clinical depression: Performance on a deployment-of-attention task. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 1995, 104:241-245.
77. McNaughton N., Corr P.J. A two-dimensional neuropsychology of defense: Fear/anxiety and defensive distance. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 2004, 28:285-305.
78. Miltner W.H.R., Krieschel S., Hecht H., Trippe R., Weiss T. Eye movements and behavioral responses to threatening and nonthreatening stimuli during visual search in phobic and nonphobic subjects. Emotion 2004, 4:323-339.
79. Mitte K. Memory bias for threatening information in anxiety and anxiety disorders: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin 2008, 134:886-891.
80. Mogg K., Bradley B.P. A cognitive-motivational analysis of anxiety. Behaviour Research and Therapy 1998, 36:809-848.
81. Mogg K., Bradley B.P. Selective orienting of attention to masked threat faces in social anxiety. Behaviour Research and Therapy 2002, 40:1403-1414.
82. Mogg K., Bradley B.P. Attentional bias in generalized anxiety disorder versus depressive disorder. Cognitive Therapy and Research 2005, 29:29-45.
83. Mogg K., Bradley B.P., Williams R., Mathews A. Subliminal processing of emotional information in anxiety and depression. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 1993, 102:304-311.
84. Mogg K., Bradley B., Miles F., Dixon R. Time course of attentional bias for threat scenes: Testing the vigilance-avoidance hypothesis. Cognition and Emotion 2004, 18:689-700.
85. Mogg K., Garner M., Bradley B.P. Anxiety and orienting of gaze to angry and fearful faces. Biological Psychology 2007, 76:163-169.
86. Mogg K., Holmes A., Garner M., Bradley B.P. Effects of threat cues on attentional shifting, disengagement and response slowing in anxious individuals. Behaviour Research and Therapy 2008, 46:656-667.
87. Mogg K., Mathews A., Weinman J. Memory bias in clinical anxiety. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 1987, 96:94-98.
88. Mogg K., Millar N., Bradley B.P. Biases in eye movements to threatening facial expressions in generalized anxiety disorder and depressive disorder. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 2000, 109:695-704.
89. Mulkens S.A.N., de Jong P.J., Merckelbach H. Disgust and spider phobia. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 1996, 105:464-468.
90. Nolen-Hoeksema S., Wisco B., Lyubomirsky S. Rethinking rumination. Perspectives on Psychological Science 2008, 3:400-424.
91. Nummenmaa L., Hyöna J., Calvo M.G. Preferential selective attention to emotional pictures: An eye movement study. Emotion 2006, 6:257-268.
92. Nummenmaa L., Hyönä J., Calvo M.G. Emotional scene content drives the saccade generation system reflexively. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Human Perception and Performance 2009, 35:305-323.
93. Oehlberg, K.A., Revelle, W., & Mineka, S. (in press). Time-course of attention to negative stimuli: Negative affectivity, anxiety, or dysphoria? Emotion. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0027227.
94. Öhman A., Flykt A., Esteves F. Emotion drives attention: Detecting the snake in the grass. Journal of Experimental Psychology. General 2001, 130:466-478.
95. Pashler H. The psychology of attention 1998, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
96. Peckham A.D., McHugh R.K., Otto M.W. A meta-analysis of the magnitude of biased attention in depression. Depression and Anxiety 2010, 27:1135-1142.
97. Peña-Esparza, Y. (2011). Attentional biases in dysphoric college students. Unpublished dissertation. University of Mexico, Albuquerque.
98. Pflugshaupt T., Mosimann U.P., Schmitt W.J., von Wartburg R., Wurtz P., Lüthi M., et al. To look or not to look at threat? Scanpath differences within a group of spider phobics. Journal of Anxiety Disorders 2007, 21:353-366.
99. Pflugshaupt T., Mosimann U.P., von Wartburg R., Schmitt W., Nyffeler T., Müri R.M. Hypervigilance-avoidance pattern in spider phobia. Journal of Anxiety Disorders 2005, 19:105-116.
100. Posner M.I., Peterson S.E. The attention system of the human brain. Annual Review of Neuroscience 1990, 13:25-42.
101. Rayner K. Eye movements in reading and information processing: 20 years of research. Psychological Bulletin 1998, 124:372-422.
102. Reese H.E., McNally R.J., Najmi S., Amir N. Attention training for reducing spider fear in spider-fearful individuals. Journal of Anxiety Disorders 2010, 24:657-662.
103. Rinck M., Becker E.S. Spider fearful individuals attend to threat, then quickly avoid it: Evidence from eye movements. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 2006, 115:231-238.
104. Rinck M., Reinecke A., Ellwart T., Heuer K., Becker E.S. Speeded detection and increased distraction in fear of spiders: Evidence from eye movements. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 2005, 114:235-248.
105. Rohner J.C. The time-course of visual threat processing: High trait anxious individuals eventually avert their gaze from angry faces. Cognition and Emotion 2002, 16:837-844.
106. Royzman E.B., Sabini J. Something it takes to be an emotion: The interesting case of disgust. Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior 2001, 31:29-59.
107. Sander D., Grafman J., Zalla T. The human amygdala: An evolved system for relevance detection. Reviews in the Neurosciences 2003, 14:303-316.
108. Schofield C.A., Johnson A.L., Inhoff A.W., Coles M.E. Social anxiety and difficulty disengaging threat: Evidence from eye-tracking. Cognition and Emotion 2012, 26:300-311.
109. Sears C.R., Newman K.R., Ference J.D., Thomas C.L. Attention to emotional images in previously depressed individuals: An eye tracking study. Cognitive Therapy and Research 2011, 35:517-528.
110. Sears C.R., Thomas C.L., LeHuquet J.M., Johnson J.C.S. Attentional biases in dysphoria: An eye-tracking study of the allocation and disengagement of attention. Cognition and Emotion 2010, 24:1349-1368.
111. Shane M.S., Peterson J.B. An evaluation of early and late stage environmental processing of positive and negative information in dysphoria. Cognition and Emotion 2007, 21:789-815.
112. Siegle G.J., Granholm E., Ingram R.E., Matt G.E. Pupillary and reaction time measures of sustained processing of negative information in depression. Biological Psychiatry 2001, 49:624-636.
113. Stevens S., Rist F., Gerlach A.L. Eye movement assessment in individuals with social phobia: Differential usefulness for varying presentation times?. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry 2011, 42:219-224.
114. Toh W., Rossell S.L., Castle D.J. Current visual scanpath research: A review of investigations into the psychotic, anxiety, and mood disorders. Comprehensive Psychiatry 2011, 52:567-569.
115. Tolin D.F., Lohr J.M., Lee T.C., Sawchuk C.N. Visual avoidance in specific phobia. Behaviour Research and Therapy 1999, 37:63-70.
116. Tottenham N., Tanaka J.W., Leon A.C., McCarry T., Nurse M., Hare T.A., et al. NimStim set of facial expressions: Judgments from untrained research participants. Psychiatry Research 2009, 168:242-249.
117. Van Bockstaele B., Verschuere B., Koster E.H.W., Tibboel H., De Houwer J., Crombez G. Effects of attention training on self-reported, implicit, physiological and behavioural measures of spider fear. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry 2011, 42:211-218.
118. Viechtbauer W. Conducting meta-analyses in R with the metafor package. Journal of Statistical Software 2010, 36:1-48.
119. Vuilleumier P. How brains beware: Neural mechanisms of emotional attention. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 2005, 9:585-594.
120. Wadlinger H.A., Isaacowitz D.M. Looking happy: The experimental manipulation of a positive visual attention bias. Emotion 2008, 8:121-126.
121. Wadlinger H.A., Isaacowitz D.M. Fixing our focus: Training attention to regulate emotion. Personality and Social Psychology Review 2011, 15:75-102.
122. Weierich M.R., Treat T.A., Hollingworth A. Theories and measurement of visual attentional processing in anxiety. Cognition and Emotion 2008, 22:985-1018.
123. Wells T.T., Beevers C.G. Biased attention and dysphoria: Manipulating selective attention reduces subsequent depressive symptoms. Cognition and Emotion 2010, 24:719-728.
124. Wells T.T., Beevers C.G., Robison A.E., Ellis A. Gaze behavior predicts memory bias for angry faces in stable dysphoria. Emotion 2010, 10:894-902.
125. Wiens S., Peira N., Golkar A., Öhman A. Recognizing masked threat: Fear betrays, but disgust you can trust. Emotion 2008, 8:810-819.
126. Wieser M.J., Pauli P., Weyers P., Alpers G.W., Muhlberger A. Fear of negative evaluation and the hypervigilance-avoidance hypothesis: An eye-tracking study. Journal of Neural Transmission 2009, 116:717-723.
127. Williams J.M., Mathews A., MacLeod C. The emotional Stroop task and psychopathology. Psychological Bulletin 1996, 120:3-24.
128. Williams J.M., Watts F.N., MacLeod C., Matthews A. Cognitive psychology and emotional disorders 1988, Wiley, Chichester, England.
129. Yates A., Ashwin C., Fox E. Does emotion processing require attention? The effects of fear conditioning and perceptual load. Emotion 2010, 10:822-830.