Attention to the eyes and eye contact form an important basis for the development of empathy and social competences including prosocial behavior. Thus, impairments in attention to the eyes of an interaction partner might play a role in the etiology of antisocial behavior and violence. For the first time, the present study extends investigations of eye gaze to a large sample (N = 173) including not only male but also female violent offenders and a control group. We assessed viewing patterns during the categorization of emotional faces via eye tracking. Our results indicate a reduced frequency of initial attention shifts to the eyes in female and male offenders compared to controls, while there were no general group differences in overall attention to the eye region (i.e., relative dwell time). Thus, we conclude that violent offenders might be able to compensate for deficits in spontaneous attention orienting during later stages of information processing.

注意眼睛和眼神接触是发展共情和社会能力（包括亲社会行为）的重要基础。因此，对互动伙伴眼睛注意力的损害可能在反社会行为和暴力的病因学中发挥作用。本研究首次将目光注视的调查扩展到大样本（N = 173），不仅包括男性，还包括女性暴力犯罪者和对照组。我们通过眼动追踪评估情绪面孔分类过程中的观看模式。我们的结果表明，与对照组相比，女性和男性罪犯的初始注意力转移到眼睛的频率降低，而对眼睛区域的整体注意力（即相对停留时间）没有普遍的组差异。因此，