An eye-tracking study of interpersonal threat sensitivity and adverse childhood experiences in borderline personality disorder

作者：K. Seitz, Johanna Leitenstorfer, Marlene Krauch, Karen Hillmann, Sabrina Boll, Kai Ueltzhoeffer, Corinne Neukel, Nikolaus Kleindienst, Sabine C. Herpertz, Katja Bertsch · 发表于：Borderline Personality Disorder and Emotion Dysregulation · 年份：2021 · DOI：10.1186/s40479-020-00141-7 · 被引用次数：32 · 研究领域：Personality Disorders and Psychopathology、Psychopathy, Forensic Psychiatry, Sexual Offending、Bipolar Disorder and Treatment

BACKGROUND: Previous eye-tracking studies provide preliminary evidence for a hypersensitivity to negative, potentially threatening interpersonal cues in borderline personality disorder (BPD). From an etiological point of view, such interpersonal threat hypersensitivity might be explained by a biological vulnerability along with a history of early life adversities. The objective of the current study was to investigate interpersonal threat hypersensitivity and its association with adverse childhood experiences (ACE) in patients with BPD employing eye-tracking technology. METHODS: We examined a sample of 46 unmedicated, adult female patients with BPD and 25 healthy female volunteers, matched on age and intelligence, with a well-established emotion classification paradigm with angry, fearful, happy, and neutral facial expressions. ACE were assessed retrospectively with the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire. RESULTS: Patients as compared to healthy volunteers reflexively directed their gaze more quickly towards the eyes of emotional and neutral faces and did not adapt their fixation patterns according to the facial expression presented. Misclassifying emotional and neutral faces as angry correlated positively with the patients' self-reported ACE. CONCLUSIONS: Building on and extending earlier findings, our results are likely to suggest a visual hypervigilance towards the eyes of emotional and neutral facial expressions and a childhood trauma-related anger bias in patients with BPD. G...