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

by Andrés Castellanos-Chacón, Daniela Arias-Otero, Valeria Uribe-Jaramillo, Juan David Leongómez, Milena Vásquez-Amézquita

The attentional system tends to prioritize negative stimuli in the early stages of processing, favoring threat detection. However, it is unclear whether this bias is maintained or reversed toward positive stimuli at later stages. In this study, we used a free-viewing paradigm with eye tracking to examine early and late attentional biases toward negative, positive, and neutral stimuli (humans in emotionally unloaded activities) versus control stimuli (inanimate objects) in 122 participants without affective disorders (64 men, 58 women). We fitted generalized linear mixed models with random intercepts for stimuli and random intercepts and slopes for participants, and used non-parametric bootstrap resampling to obtain robust estimates and confidence intervals. Additionally, the number of first fixations was analyzed with a COM-Poisson. Results showed that participants fixated faster (χ²(3) = 97.55, p 2(3) = 337.45, p χ²(3) = 200.24, p χ²(3) = 207.02, p