ISSN 1671-3710
CN 11-4766/R
主办:中国科学院心理研究所
出版:科学出版社

心理科学进展 ›› 2021, Vol. 29 ›› Issue (4): 737-746.doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1042.2021.00737

• ·研究前沿· • 上一篇    下一篇

创伤后应激障碍个体对威胁刺激的注意偏向:眼动研究的证据

白玉1, 杨海波2,3()   

  1. 1天津师范大学心理学部, 天津 300387
    2国民心理健康评估与促进协同创新中心, 天津 300074
    3教育部人文社会科学重点研究基地天津师范大学心理与行为研究院, 天津 300074
  • 收稿日期:2020-04-25 出版日期:2021-04-15 发布日期:2021-02-22

The attentional bias towards threat in posttraumatic stress disorder: Evidence from eye movement studies

BAI Yu1, YANG Haibo2,3()   

  1. 1Faculty of Psychology, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin 300387, China
    2Center of Collaborative Innovation for Assessment and Promotion of Mental Health, Tianjin 300074, China
    3Key Research Base of Humanities and Social Sciences of the Ministry of Education, Academy of Psychology and Behavior, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin 300074, China
  • Received:2020-04-25 Online:2021-04-15 Published:2021-02-22

摘要:

对威胁刺激的注意偏向是创伤后应激障碍(PTSD)个体的一种表现。近年来, 研究者利用眼动技术探讨了注意偏向的加工特点及其内在机制。尽管针对是否存在注意定向加速、注意解除困难或注意回避的研究结果并不一致, 但都试图为验证如警戒-回避模型、注意保持模型等提供眼动证据。未来研究在记录PTSD个体注视模式时, 不仅需要从多个维度构建、整合PTSD个体的眼动模型, 也要结合多种技术从多模态角度共同考察PTSD个体的威胁信息注意偏向机制。

关键词: 创伤后应激障碍, 注意偏向, 眼动

Abstract:

Attentional bias towards threat information is a common phenomenon in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) individuals. A number of studies have investigated the processing characteristics and internal mechanisms of attentional bias by using eye-movement technology. it is found that factors influenced the three components are distinct. 
First, facilitated attention is the consequence by the interaction of the threat stimulus type and the eye movement indicators. PTSD individuals are more likely to be alert to threat words, which is not only related to the interference of pictures and words in the recognition process, but also affected by arousal, salience and complexity of stimulus. Furthermore, the smaller visual angle presented in previous studies may also accelerate the attentional capture of threat words. In addition, the inconsistent selection of eye movement measures may also cause the difference of the results of attention directed acceleration: the first fixation latency is not sensitive to the component due to the inability to measure the apparent eye movement. Moreover, the spatial indicators are more suitable to investigate this processing to threat words, but pupil index is more appropriate to threat pictures. 
Second, PTSD individuals do not have the difficulty in attention disengagement to threat words. It may be related to preview, information density, and unconscious binding. Words preview leads to rapid processing; however, it is not available to continuously capture the attention because of low information density. Besides, the unconscious binding of “static-words” also makes it difficult to show the difficulty in attention disengagement to threat words. 
Third, the absence of attentional avoidance to threat information may be a long-term self-protection strategy adopted by PTSD individuals, and this result will not be affected by analysis methods, stimuli types, and presentation time. Therefore, it is more likely to be the mechanism of “facilitated attention - difficulty in attention disengagement”. Indeed, compared with behavioral response time, eye tracking technology can monitor the time course of attention while PTSD individuals look at the threat stimuli. On the one hand, it can deeply understand the attention characteristics of PTSD individuals caused by different types of traumatic events, and on the other hand, it can verify relevant attention-biased stage theory. From the observation of phenomenon to the theoretical construction, it is a more comprehensive investigation of the attentional bias processing mechanism to this type of affective disorder. 
Future research may also should to pay attention to the following aspects. First of all, whether researchers can maximize the advantages of eye movement technology is still worth discussing. They can construct the unique attentional bias eye movement pattern and corresponding eye movement model of PTSD individuals from multiple dimensions based on the perspective of eye movement mechanism, for example, age. The PTSD rate of American children and adolescents is higher than that of American adults caused by the same experience, and compared with PTSD adults, PTSD children will show more hypervigilance and traumatic memories of repeated intrusions. In addition, the immaturity of the eye physiological system of children and adolescents may lead to more limitations or inconsistent eye movement patterns. The superposition of these differences may cause heterogeneity in the eye movement patterns of attentional bias between different PTSD groups. Consequently, it is necessary to construct corresponding attentional bias eye movement patterns and theoretical models from the age level for researchers. Second, when researchers make full use of eye tracking technology to investigate PTSD attention bias, they also need to combine multiple technologies to investigate the threat attention bias mechanism of PTSD individuals from a multimodal perspective, such as physiological indicators, event-related potentials, and so on.

Key words: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, attentional bias, eye-movement

中图分类号: