The relationship between dispositional attention to feelings and visual attention to emotion

Publication date: Available online 4 February 2020Source: Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological PsychiatryAuthor(s): Anna Bujanow, Charlott Maria Bodenschatz, Monika Szymanska, Anette Kersting, Lauriane Vulliez-Coady, Thomas SuslowAbstractAttention to feelings is a core dimension of individual differences in the perception of one's emotions. It concerns the frequency with which own emotions are attended to. The aim of the present eye-tracking investigation was to examine the relationship of dispositional attention to feelings with early and late attentional processes in the visual perception of emotional information. Attentional orientation was assessed in a sample of healthy women (N = 91) using eye-tracking during a free viewing task in which images with positive, negative and neutral content were shown simultaneously. Pictures were taken from the Besançon Affective Picture Set. State and trait affect, depression, and intelligence of participants were controlled. In our sample, attention to feelings was not related to positive affect, negative affect, depression or intelligence. Attention to feelings was negatively correlated with entry times for all emotional picture types. Moreover, attention to feelings was positively correlated with dwell time on positive images and negatively correlated with dwell time on neutral images. Our data indicate that devoting habitually attention to one's feelings is linked to an enhanced initial orientation of attention to...
Source: Progress in Neuro Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry - Category: Psychiatry Source Type: research