Avaliação emocional e rastreamento ocular no transtorno de ansiedade social

Abstract

This research aimed to study the recognition of facial expressions associated with eye tracking in subjects with symptoms of social anxiety and control volunteers. 56 volunteers participated, 28 of which presented SAD symptoms and 28 controls. Two experimental tasks were conducted in randomized order: one required the recognition of static faces of happiness, disgust, anger and sadness, displayed in intensities of 25, 50, 75 and 100%, apart from the emotional attribution to neutral faces; the other required recognition of the dynamic faces of the same emotions and intensities. While the participants watched the face and recognized the emotion, an eye tracker Tobii TX300 captured binocular eye movements. The averages of correct recognition of facial expressions were subjected to an ANOVA for repeated measures. With the frequency of emotional attribution to the neutral face, it was performed a chi-square test of general independence and other separated by gender. From the eye movement records, three parameters were analyzed by an ANOVA, to emotional faces and to neutral faces: the total number of eye fixations in the regions of interest; the total length of fixations; and the average time of fixations. Regarding to recognition, there was no difference between the groups. Dynamic faces showed higher recognition rate. For neutral faces, both groups more often related sadness to stimulus, however, participants with SAD symptoms had higher allocation of that emotion. Regarding the eye register, there was hypervigilance on the group with SAD symptoms. There was a greater number of fixations in the photographs, while the total and average time of fixations in the videos was higher. The nose area had the biggest number of fixations, while the eyes had the smaller. In the photographs, the participants fixed more over the eyes, while tin he video the fixation was more in the mouth. In the neutral faces analysis, the control group fixated for longer. Regarding the neutral faces, the trace pattern was similar to the expression of sadness, therefore, this was the most related emotion. It can be concluded that the face movement influences the recognition only for some subtle emotions. Eye movement patterns revealed that participants used different strategies to recognize photos and videos. Subjects with SAD symptoms revealed a pattern of hypervigilance, with greater recognition rate for the face of subtle sadness. Keywords: Facial expression, social anxiety disorder, eye movements; ocular fixation.