UC Berkeley

Research has yielded mixed findings regarding whether bipolar disorder is related to attentional bias for emotionally-relevant stimuli, yet little research has utilized advances in eye-tracking technology to study attention in this population. The current study used a free-viewing eye-tracking paradigm to test whether people with remitted bipolar disorder show preferential attention to positive faces, and to test if comorbid anxiety or emotion regulation strategies are related to attention bias. Twenty-nine adults with bipolar I disorder and 28 control participants viewed images of emotionally valenced faces while their gaze was tracked, and participants completed self-report measures of emotion regulation. Contrary to hypotheses, people with bipolar disorder did not differ from control participants in attention to positive stimuli, and both anxiety comorbidity and emotion regulation were unrelated to attentional indices. Unlike some findings in unipolar depression, these results suggest that attention to valenced faces may not be characteristic of remitted bipolar disorder.