4.6 Article

Gender differences in attentive bias during social information processing in schizophrenia: An eye-tracking study

Journal

ASIAN JOURNAL OF PSYCHIATRY
Volume 66, Issue -, Pages -

Publisher

ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.ajp.2021.102871

Keywords

Schizophrenia; Eye tracking; Social information processing; Gender difference

Categories

Funding

  1. Ministry of Science and Technology of China [2016YFC1306800]
  2. National Natural Science Foundation of China [81671329]
  3. Major Program of National Social Science Foundation of China [18ZDA293]
  4. Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality [17411969900]
  5. Shanghai Municipal Health Commission [201840269, 20144Y0053]
  6. Shanghai Hospital Development Center [SHDC12014111]
  7. Shanghai Key Laboratory of Psychotic Disorders [13dz2260500]
  8. Shanghai Jiao Tong University [ZH2018QNB19]
  9. Shanghai Mental Health Center [2018-FX-04, 2013-YJGJ-03]

Ask authors/readers for more resources

This study used eye-tracking technology to investigate attention bias in schizophrenia patients during social information processing. The findings suggest that patients with schizophrenia exhibit altered attention bias towards pictures of communicating individuals, with male patients showing significantly lower attention ratio than male controls. Moreover, the study also found that attention bias is correlated with symptom severity in both male and female patients.
Interpersonal communication is a specific scenario in which patients with psychiatric symptoms may manifest different behavioral patterns due to psychopathology. This was a pilot study by eye-tracking technology to investigate attentive bias during social information processing in schizophrenia. We enrolled 39 patients with schizophrenia from Shanghai Mental Health Center and 42 age , gender- and education-matched healthy controls. The experiment was a free-viewing task, in which pictures with three types of degree of interpersonal communication were shown. We used two measures: 1) initial fixation duration, 2) total gaze duration. The Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) was used to determine symptom severity. The ratio of first fixation duration for pictures of communicating vs. non-communicating persons was significantly lower in patients than in controls (Mann-Whitney U = 512, p = 0.004). We found that male patients showed a significantly lower ratio of first fixation duration than male controls (Mann-Whitney U = 190, p = 0.028), while it was marginally lower in female patients than female controls (Mann-Whitney U = 77, p = 0.057). The ratio of first fixation duration for pictures of communicating persons vs. no persons was negatively correlated with PANSS negative symptoms in male patients (rho = -0.458, p = 0.024). In contrast, it was negatively correlated with PANSS positive symptoms in female patients (-0.701, p = 0.004). These findings suggest altered attentive bias during social information processing with a pattern of avoidance at first sight towards pictures of communicating persons in schizophrenia. It is worthwhile to note that social functioning impairment is associated with the severity of symptoms.

Authors

I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.

Reviews

Primary Rating

4.6
Not enough ratings

Secondary Ratings

Novelty
-
Significance
-
Scientific rigor
-
Rate this paper

Recommended

No Data Available
No Data Available