Interpretation of Ambiguous Images in Dysphoria: Evidence from Categorization Tasks and Eye Gaze Tracking.

摘要

The study looked for evidence of interpretive biases in dysphoric individuals by examining their categorization of and attention to ambiguous images. In Part 1 of the study, participants looked at four categories of images (ambiguous, positive, negative, and neutral) and rated the images on a scale ranging from positive to negative. Dysphoric participants differed from non-dysphoric participants in how they rated 12 ambiguous images. Interestingly, all twelve of these images included faces, a finding that may be related to the findings of Beevers et al. (2009) and Surgulazde et al. (2004). In Part 2 of the study, the same images were shown to participants while their eye fixations were recorded. Four images (one of each type) were presented to participants simultaneously for 10 seconds, while eye gaze was recorded. There were no between-group differences in the attention to ambiguous images; however, dysphoric participants attended to positive images significantly less than non-dysphoric participants.