Eye-tracking patterns in borderline personality disorder: findings from a relational dot-probe task

Abstract

Background and objectives: Among the main dysfunctions of borderline personality disorder, a topic of interest is the study of attentional mechanisms that evaluates which stimuli attracts patients’ attention and how patients process incoming stimuli. Different attentional biases could be manifested in borderline personality disorder: hypervigilance of emotional cues, difficulties in disengaging attention or avoidance. Additionally, social contents could be particularly problematic for patients given their alterations in the interpersonal domain. The current study aimed to investigate alterations in attentional mechanisms in response to interpersonal stimuli (positive, negative, and erotic) in this clinical population. Methods: A modified version of the dot-probe task using socio-relational pictures was administered to 31 patients with borderline personality disorder and 31 healthy controls. The relational stimuli had a positive, negative, and erotic valence to test possible difference related to specific contents administered. Reaction times and eye-tracking data were collected during the tasks. Results: Borderline personality disorder patients showed low latency to negative and erotic contents supporting a condition of hypervigilance associated to these contents. Additionally, patients reported high bias score in response to erotic stimuli manifesting difficulties in disentangling attention from these contents. On the contrary, reduced bias score and low visual exploration were manifested by borderline personality disorder subjects in response to negative stimuli, supporting the use of avoidance mechanisms. Additionally, high levels of negative affectivity affected the previous processes increasing patients’ alertness to potential threating (or rejecting) situations. Conclusions: As a whole our findings confirm the presence of altered attentional mechanisms in borderline personality disorder. These patients showed hypervigilance to erotic and negative relational situations, in line with well documented interpersonal problems. However, stimuli specific contents (e.g., erotic vs negative) differentiate later stage of attentional process bringing patients to manifest difficulties in disengaging attention in some cases and avoidance mechanisms in others.

Keywords

• borderline personality disorder
• eye-tracking
• attentional bias
• hypervigilance
• avoidance.