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. 2021 Feb 17:11:569946.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2020.569946. eCollection 2020.

The Effect of Alexithymia on Attentional Bias Toward Emotional Stimuli in Depression: An Eye-Tracking Study

M Annemiek Bergman  1   2 , Constance Th W M Vissers  3   4 , Rose M Collard  1 , Philip van Eijndhoven  1   2 , Aart H Schene  1   2 , Janna N Vrijsen  1   2   5
Affiliations

The Effect of Alexithymia on Attentional Bias Toward Emotional Stimuli in Depression: An Eye-Tracking Study

M Annemiek Bergman et al. Front Psychiatry. .

Abstract

Alexithymia-reflecting deficits in cognitive emotion processing-is highly prevalent in individuals with depressive disorders. Subsequently, mixed evidence for attentional bias is found in these individuals. Alexithymia may be a potential influencing factor for attentional bias in depression. In the current study, 83 currently depressed (CD) and 76 never-depressed (ND) controls completed an eye-tracker task consisting of valenced (non)-social pictures. Alexithymia scores were also included as a moderator as both a continuous and categorical measure (so high vs. low alexithymia). No group difference or moderating effect of alexithymia was found on attentional bias. Thus, alexithymic symptoms, included both dimensionally and categorically, may not influence biased attentional processing in depression compared to ND individuals. Thus, it is important to explore other potential explaining factors for the equivocal results found on biased attentional processing of emotional information in depression.

Keywords: alexithymia; attentional bias; depression; emotion regulation; executive functioning.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Left: an example slide from the non-social block; Right: an example slide from the social block. All stimuli in this study, including the ones depicted in these example slides, have been obtained from two public databases, namely, the Nencki Affective Picture System (47) and the International Affective Picture System (46).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Moderation model with group [currently depressed (CD) individuals vs. never depressed (ND) controls] as predictor (X), total TAS-20 score as the moderator (W), and the relative attentional bias score as the outcome (Y) variable.
Figure 3
Figure 3
The graph represents the mean relative attentional bias scores for each group with individual data points: HA-CD, high alexithymia currently depressed (n = 29); LA-CD, low alexithymia currently depressed (n = 28); ND-A, never depressed controls (n = 47). Error bars represent standard deviations.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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