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Open Access 01-10-2016 | Original Article

Can’t Look Away: An Eye-Tracking Based Attentional Disengagement Training for Depression

Authors: Gina R. A. Ferrari, Martin Möbius, Amras van Opdorp, Eni S. Becker, Mike Rinck

Published in: Cognitive Therapy and Research | Issue 5/2016

Abstract

To address shortcomings of purely reaction-time based attentional bias modification (ABM) paradigms, we developed an ABM task that is controlled by eye-tracking. This task allows to assess and train both disengagement from negative pictures and maintained attention to positive pictures. As a proof-of-principle study with an unselected student sample, this positive training (PT; N = 44) was compared to a negative training (NT; N = 42), which reinforced the opposite attentional pattern. Importantly, training trials were completed only if participants performed the correct gaze patterns. Results showed that higher depression levels were associated with slower disengagement from negative stimuli at baseline. As expected, the PT induced longer fixations on positive pictures and faster disengagement from negative pictures. The NT showed no changes in attentional processes. The groups did not differ in mood reactivity and recovery from a stressor. Advantages of using eye-tracking in ABM and potential applications of the training are discussed.

As the raw gaze latencies used to calculate the three attentional indices were not normally distributed, median scores were calculated rather than mean scores, in order to reduce the impact of skewness and extreme values in the raw data.

Given the unselected nature of our sample, we additionally explored the correlations between the two log-transformed attentional component variables and the other trait questionnaires (STAI and PANAS). While the correlations with PANAS were not significant (p > .133), anxiety ratings were positively related to maintained attention to positive stimuli, r(86) = .22, p = .046, as well as to disengagement from negative stimuli, r(86) = .25, p = .021, indicating that the more anxious participants were, the longer they took to disengage attention from the picture they had fixated first, irrespective of the picture's valence.

Due to technical and experimenter errors, data from only 67 participants were available for this analysis.

As Sanchez et al. (2013) found that difficulties in disengagement specifically predicted lower recovery from sad mood after stress, we conducted additional exploratory MANOVAs, with the change scores of all six mood items as dependent variables, for the different phases of the experiment. A MANOVA on the six mood change-scores from before (T0) to after the training (T1), revealed no significant effect of group, F(6, 60) = 1.63, p = .156. A MANOVA on mood changes in response to the speech task (mood reactivity: T2–T3) revealed no significant group effect either, F(6, 76) = 1.23, p = .3. Also, a MANOVA on change scores of all mood items, from announcement of the speech task (T3) to after the recovery phase (T5; mood recovery) was not significant, F(6, 76) = 0.31, p = .93.

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Title: Can’t Look Away: An Eye-Tracking Based Attentional Disengagement Training for Depression
Authors: Gina R. A. Ferrari
Martin Möbius
Amras van Opdorp
Eni S. Becker
Mike Rinck
Publication date: 01-10-2016
Publisher: Springer US
Published in: Cognitive Therapy and Research / Issue 5/2016
Print ISSN: 0147-5916
Electronic ISSN: 1573-2819
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-016-9766-0

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Can’t Look Away: An Eye-Tracking Based Attentional Disengagement Training for Depression

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