Social cognition impairments, and notably emotional facial expression (EFE) recognition difficulties, as well as their functional and clinical correlates, are increasingly documented in severe alcohol use disorder (SAUD). However, insights into their underlying mechanisms are lacking. Here, we tested if SAUD was associated with alterations in the attentional processing of EFEs. In a preregistered study, 40 patients with SAUD and 40 healthy controls (HCs) had to identify the emotional expression conveyed by faces while having their gaze recorded by an eye-tracker. We assessed indices of initial (first fixation locations) and later (number of fixations and dwell-time) attention with reference to regions of interest corresponding to the eyes, mouth, and nose, which carry key information for EFE recognition. We centrally found that patients had less first fixations to key facial features in general, as well as less fixations and dwell time to the eyes specifically, relative to the rest of the face, compared to controls. These effects were invariant across emotional expressions. Additional exploratory analyses revealed that patients with SAUD had a less structured viewing pattern than controls. These results offer novel, direct, evidence that patients with SAUD's socioaffective difficulties already emerge at the facial attentional processing stage, along with precisions regarding the nature and generalizability of the effects. Potential implications for the mechanistic conceptualization and treatment of social cognition difficulties in SAUD are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

---

严重酒精使用障碍中面部表情特征的注意力处理改变：一项眼球追踪研究。


严重酒精使用障碍 (SAUD) 中越来越多地记录了社会认知障碍，尤其是情绪面部表情 (EFE) 识别困难及其功能和临床相关性。然而，缺乏对其潜在机制的深入了解。在这里，我们测试了 SAUD 是否与 EFE 注意力处理的改变有关。在一项预先注册的研究中，40 名 SAUD 患者和 40 名健康对照者 (HC) 必须识别面部传达的情绪表达，同时用眼动仪记录他们的目光。我们参考与眼睛、嘴巴和鼻子相对应的感兴趣区域评估了初始（首次注视位置）和后期（注视次数和停留时间）注意力指数，这些区域携带了 EFE 识别的关键信息。我们集中发现，与对照组相比，患者对主要面部特征的首次注视较少，而且相对于面部其他部位，患者对眼睛的注视和停留时间也较少。这些影响在不同的情绪表达中是不变的。其他探索性分析显示，SAUD 患者的观看模式比对照组的结构化程度较低。这些结果提供了新颖、直接的证据，表明 SAUD 患者的社会情感困难已经在面部注意力处理阶段出现，并提供了关于影响的性质和普遍性的精确性。讨论了 SAUD 社会认知困难的机械概念化和治疗的潜在影响。 （PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2023 APA，保留所有权利）。