Visual exploration of emotion eliciting images by patients with schizophrenia

To examine the relationship between emotional activation and information gathering in schizophrenia, the eye movements and emotional responses of 20 patients with schizophrenia and 10 patients without history of psychosis were recorded while viewing 30 images varying in pleasantness. Emotionally activating pictures were more extensively explored than neutral pictures by both groups but especially by schizophrenia patients. Comparison patients explored pictures more extensively during the early part of image exposure, whereas patients with schizophrenia took longer to engage in informative exploration. The scan path lengths and the proportions of fixation time spent in regions of interest did not differ between groups, although persons with schizophrenia had longer fixations and looked at fewer regions of interest in neutral pictures. Emotion reports did not differ between groups. Schizophrenia patients' results are consistent with the hypothesized normalizing effects of emotional activation on the distribution of attention.