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.
Keywords: Depression; attentional bias; eye-tracking.