scholarly journals Biased Attention to Facial Expressions of Ambiguous Emotions in Borderline Personality Disorder: An Eye-Tracking Study

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (5) ◽  
pp. 671-S8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah Kaiser ◽  
Gitta A. Jacob ◽  
Linda van Zutphen ◽  
Nicolette Siep ◽  
Andreas Sprenger ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Borderline Personality Disorder ◽  
Personality Disorder ◽  
Visual Attention ◽  
Emotion Recognition ◽  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Stress Disorder ◽  
Preliminary Evidence ◽  
Borderline Personality ◽  
Ambiguous Faces

Preliminary evidence suggests that biased attention could be crucial in fostering the emotion recognition abnormalities in borderline personality disorder (BPD). We compared BPD patients to Cluster-C personality disorder (CC) patients and non-patients (NP) regarding emotion recognition in ambiguous faces and their visual attention allocation to the eyes. The role of comorbid posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in BPD regarding emotion recognition and visual attention was explored. BPD patients fixated the eyes of angry/happy, sad/happy, and fearful/sad blends longer than non-patients. This visual attention pattern was mainly driven by BPD patients with PTSD. This subgroup also demonstrated longer fixations than CC patients and a trend towards longer fixations than BPD patients without PTSD for the angry/happy and fearful/sad blends. Emotion recognition was not altered in BPD. Biased visual attention towards the eyes of ambiguous facial expressions in BPD might be due to trauma-related attentional bias rather than to impairments in facial emotion recognition.

Negative bias in fast emotion discrimination in borderline personality disorder

2008 ◽  
Vol 39 (5) ◽  
pp. 855-864 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Dyck ◽  
U. Habel ◽  
J. Slodczyk ◽  
J. Schlummer ◽  
V. Backes ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Borderline Personality Disorder ◽  
Personality Disorder ◽  
Emotion Recognition ◽  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Healthy Subjects ◽  
Borderline Personality ◽  
Negative Bias ◽  
Post Traumatic Stress ◽  
Co Morbidity ◽  
Direct Discrimination

BackgroundThe ability to decode emotional information from facial expressions is crucial for successful social interaction. Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is characterized by serious problems in interpersonal relationships and emotional functioning. Empirical research on facial emotion recognition in BPD has been sparsely published and results are inconsistent. To specify emotion recognition deficits in BPD more closely, the present study implemented two emotion recognition tasks differing in response format.MethodNineteen patients with BPD and 19 healthy subjects were asked to evaluate the emotional content of visually presented stimuli (emotional and neutral faces). The first task, the Fear Anger Neutral (FAN) Test, required a rapid discrimination between negative or neutral facial expressions whereas in the second task, the Emotion Recognition (ER) Test, a precise decision regarding default emotions (sadness, happiness, anger, fear and neutral) had to be achieved without a time limit.ResultsIn comparison to healthy subjects, BPD patients showed a deficit in emotion recognition only in the fast discrimination of negative and neutral facial expressions (FAN Test). Consistent with earlier findings, patients demonstrated a negative bias in the evaluation of neutral facial expressions. When processing time was unlimited (ER Test), BPD patients performed as well as healthy subjects in the recognition of specific emotions. In addition, an association between performance in the fast discrimination task (FAN Test) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) co-morbidity was indicated.ConclusionsOur data suggest a selective deficit of BPD patients in rapid and direct discrimination of negative and neutral emotional expressions that may underlie difficulties in social interactions.

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