Attentional bias scores in patients with depression and effects of age: a controlled, eye-tracking study

Objective: To compare the attentional bias of depressed patients and non-depressed control subjects and examine the effects of age using eye-tracking technology in a free-viewing set of tasks. Methods: Patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) and non-depressed control subjects completed an eye-tracking task to assess attention of processing negative, positive and neutral facial expressions. In this cross-sectional study, the tasks were separated in two types (neutral versus happy faces and neutral versus sad faces) and assessed in two age groups (‘young’ [18–30 years] and ‘middle-aged’ [31–55 years]). Results: Compared with non-depressed control subjects (n = 75), patients with MDD (n = 90) had a significant reduced positive attentional bias and enhanced negative attentional bias irrespective of age. The positive attentional bias in ‘middle-aged’ patients with MDD was significantly lower than in ‘young’ patients, although there was no difference between the two age groups in negative attentional bias. Conclusions: These results confirm that there are emotional attentional biases in patients with MDD and that positive attentional biases are influenced by age.