In the eyes of the beholder: investigating the effect of visual probing on accuracy and gaze fixations when attending to
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ORIGINAL CONTRIBUTION
In the eyes of the beholder: investigating the effect of visual probing on accuracy and gaze fixations when attending to facial expressions among primary and secondary callous‑unemotional variants Melina Nicole Kyranides1 · Kostas A. Fanti2 · Maria Petridou2 · Eva R. Kimonis3 Received: 26 June 2019 / Accepted: 28 November 2019 © The Author(s) 2019
Abstract Individuals with callous-unemotional (CU) traits show deficits in facial emotion recognition. According to preliminary research, this impairment may be due to attentional neglect to peoples’ eyes when evaluating emotionally expressive faces. However, it is unknown whether this atypical processing pattern is unique to established variants of CU traits or modifiable with intervention. This study examined facial affect recognition and gaze patterns among individuals (N = 80; M age = 19.95, SD = 1.01 years; 50% female) with primary vs secondary CU variants. These groups were identified based on repeated measurements of conduct problems, CU traits, and anxiety assessed in adolescence and adulthood. Accuracy and number of fixations on areas of interest (forehead, eyes, and mouth) while viewing six dynamic emotions were assessed. A visual probe was used to direct attention to various parts of the face. Individuals with primary and secondary CU traits were less accurate than controls in recognizing facial expressions across all emotions. Those identified in the low-anxious primaryCU group showed reduced overall fixations to fearful and painful facial expressions compared to those in the high-anxious secondary-CU group. This difference was not specific to a region of the face (i.e. eyes or mouth). Findings point to the importance of investigating both accuracy and eye gaze fixations, since individuals in the primary and secondary groups were only differentiated in the way they attended to specific facial expression. These findings have implications for differentiated interventions focused on improving facial emotion recognition with regard to attending and correctly identifying emotions. Keywords Eye tracking · Callous-unemotional traits · Primary psychopathy · Secondary psychopathy · Facial emotion recognition
Introduction Accurately processing emotional expressions is critical in everyday functioning and social interactions. Deficits in facial affect recognition found in individuals with Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-019-01452-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Melina Nicole Kyranides [email protected] Kostas A. Fanti [email protected] Maria Petridou [email protected] Eva R. Kimonis [email protected]
psychopathic traits [1] and conduct problems (CP [2, 3] are thought to explain their greater engagement in antisocial behavior. Several studies show that callous-unemotional (CU) traits, the putative childhood antecedent to psychopathy that is characterized by remorselessness and lack of empathy and conce
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