Effects of stimulus emotional content on gaze pattern: an eye-tracking study

Abstract

When stimuli with negative, positive, and without emotional content compete for attention, the attentional system prioritizes negative stimuli in early stages of processing, serving as a survival mechanism in response to potential threats. However, the persistence or reversal of this attentional bias towards positive stimuli during later processing stages remains unclear. To address this question, we used eye tracking technology to examine how the simultaneous presentation of stimuli, encompassing negative and positive emotional content alongside emotionally neutral stimuli, while controlling for the presence of humans, neutral (humans in non-emotional activities), and control stimuli (inanimate objects), affects both early and late attentional patterns in observers. These effects were tested in a free-viewing task involving a sample of 122 participants (64 men, 58 women) without affective disorders, data were taken between 2022 and 2023. Our results showed that negative stimuli elicited quicker initial fixation and a higher count of first fixations compared to positive, neutral, and control stimuli. Moreover, negative stimuli led to longer fixation durations and greater overall number of fixations than positive and non-emotional stimuli. Notably, emotional stimuli consistently exhibited a higher attentional preference over non-emotional stimuli, and stimuli featuring human faces, even devoid of emotional context, garnered greater attentional preference than inanimate objects.

Andrés Castellanos-Chacón

Research Assistant 2019-2024 / Teaching supervision 2019-2024 / BSc Psychology | Research supervision 2017-2018

Research assistant at the Human Behaviour Lab in since 2019, and BSc research project student between 2017 and 2018.

Juan David Leongómez

Associate Professor

My research interests include mate choice and human vocal communication, with an aspiration towards understanding musicality. I am also interested in bioacoustics and psychoacoustics, as well as statistics and  programming.

Milena Vásquez-Amézquita

Associate Professor / PhD supervision 2015-2018 / Postdoc supervision 2021-2022

Associate Professor, Researcher in Neuroscience at Universidad El Bosque. Interested in the cognitive mechanisms that underlie mood disorders and sexual behaviour.