Students Depression Susceptible Unrelated Cognitive Task Emotional Faces Attentional Bias Research

The aim of this study was to investigate attentional capture by subjects with cognitive vulnerability to depression (CVD) using irrelevant emotional distractor faces. A CVD group (n=30) and a healthy control group (n=30) were asked to search for a male face among two female faces based on the Chinese Affective Picture System (CAPS). In Experiment1, the subjects with CVD exhibited similar scanning patterns as healthy controls when identifying the target face, yet the happy facial singleton distracted the subject viewing the face. In Experiment2, two groups showed different pattern when viewing the faces. The presence of a sad facial singleton was found to slow search reaction times of the subjects with CVD compared to the all neutral condition. Yet only when present a sad facial singleton distractor slow search reaction times of the healthy control group compared to the all neutral condition. Taken together, these results suggest that negative emotional faces increase the processing time of subjects with CVD, and may help understand the subject’s risk of developing depression.