Attentional biases to emotional information may play a key role in the onset and course of schizophrenia. The aim of this experiment was to examine the attentional processing of four emotional scenes in competition (happy, neutral, sad, threatening) in 53 patients with schizophrenia and 51 controls. The eye movements were recorded in a 20-seconds free-viewing task. The results were: (i) patients showed increased attention on threatening scenes, compared to controls, in terms of attentional engagement and maintenance; (ii) patients payed less attention to happy scenes than controls, in terms of attentional maintenance; (iii) whereas positive symptoms were associated with a late avoidance of sad scenes, negative symptoms were associated with heightened attention to threat. The findings suggest that a threat-related bias and a lack of sensitivity to positive information may represent an underlying psychological mechanism of schizophrenia. Importantly, schizophrenia symptoms modulated the attentional biases, which has aetiological and therapeutic implications.

注意情绪信息的偏向可能在精神分裂症的发作和过程中起关键作用。本实验的目的是检查53名精神分裂症患者和51名对照者在比赛中四个情绪场景（快乐，中立，悲伤，威胁）的注意过程。在20秒的自由观看任务中记录了眼睛的运动。结果是：（i）在注意力参与和维持方面，与对照组相比，患者对威胁性场景表现出更高的关注度；（ii）就注意维持而言，患者对欢乐场面的关注程度低于对对照组的关注；（iii）积极的症状与较晚避免悲伤的场面有关，而消极的症状与对威胁的高度关注有关。研究结果表明，与威胁有关的偏见和对阳性信息缺乏敏感性可能代表着精神分裂症的潜在心理机制。重要的是，精神分裂症症状调节了注意偏见，这具有病因和治疗意义。