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Facial affect recognition in body dysmorphic disorder versus obsessive-compulsive disorder: An eye-tracking study
Wei Lin Toh1, David J Castle2, Susan L Rossell3
1Departments of Psychological Sciences and Psychiatry, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC 3010, Australia; Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, Monash Alfred Psychiatry Research Centre, Level 4, 607 St. Kilda Road, Melbourne, VIC 3004, Australia; Brain and Psychological Sciences Research Centre, Swinburne University, PO Box 218, Hawthorn, VIC 3122, Australia.
Background:
Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is characterised by repetitive behaviours and/or mental acts occurring in response to preoccupations with perceived defects or flaws in physical appearance (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). This study aimed to investigate facial affect recognition in BDD using an integrated eye-tracking paradigm.
Method:
Participants were 21 BDD patients, 19 obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) patients and 21 healthy controls (HC), who were age-, sex-, and IQ-matched. Stimuli were from the Pictures of Facial Affect (Ekman & Friesen, 1975), and outcome measures were affect recognition accuracy as well as spatial and temporal scanpath parameters.
Results:
Relative to OCD and HC groups, BDD patients demonstrated significantly poorer facial affect perception and an angry recognition bias. An atypical scanning strategy encompassing significantly more blinks, fewer fixations of extended mean durations, higher mean saccade amplitudes, and less visual attention devoted to salient facial features was found.
Conclusions:
Patients with BDD were substantially impaired in the scanning of faces, and unable to extract affect-related information, likely indicating deficits in basic perceptual operations.
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