Selective attentional biases towards a self-related facial feature among orthognathic patients

The present study aimed to determine what kind of face and which area of the face (eyes or mouth) rapidly capture attention among patients with dentomaxillofacial deformities (DDs). In the present experiments, faces were categorized as highly or lowly attractive (HA and LA, respectively) and as a face with dentomaxillofacial deformities (DD face). A dot-probe task and a change-detection task were utilized to examine the attentional bias to the faces and facial features, respectively. In Study 1, we found that DD patients showed an attentional bias to DD male faces compared with HA male faces, while controls showed an opposite attentional pattern. In Study 2, we found that patients responded faster to the changes in the mouths of DD male faces than those of HA and LA faces. Moreover, patients paid less attention to the mouths of HA faces than to the region of the eyes, and they paid less attention than did the controls. These results indicated that DD patients selectively directed their attention to DD male faces and the mouths of these faces. These findings were not evident in female faces. Furthermore, patients showed avoidance of the mouths of HA faces regardless of the gender of the faces.