Abstract：
Aberrations in non-verbal social cognition have been reported to coincide with major depressive disorder. Yet little is known about the role of the eyes. To fill this gap, the present study explores whether and, if so, how reading language of the eyes is altered in depression. For this purpose, patients and person-by-person matched typically developing individuals were administered the Emotions in Masked Faces task and Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test, modified, both of which contained a comparable amount of visual information available. For achieving group homogeneity, we set a focus on females as major depressive disorder displays a gender-specific profile. The findings show that facial masks selectively affect inferring emotions: recognition of sadness and anger are more heavily compromised in major depressive disorder as compared with typically developing controls, whereas the recognition of fear, happiness, and neutral expressions remains unhindered. Disgust, the forgotten emotion of psychiatry, is the least recognizable emotion in both groups. On the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test patients exhibit lower accuracy on positive expressions than their typically developing peers, but do not differ on negative items. In both depressive and typically developing individuals, the ability to recognize emotions behind a mask and performance on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test are linked to each other in processing speed, but not recognition accuracy. The outcome provides a blueprint for understanding the complexities of reading language of the eyes within and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.
摘要：
据报道，非言语社交认知中的畸变与重度抑郁症相吻合。然而，人们对眼睛的作用知之甚少。为了填补这个空白，本研究探讨了是否和，如果是,在抑郁症中，眼睛的阅读语言是如何改变的。为此,患者和与通常发育中的个体匹配的人接受了蒙面情绪任务和眼睛阅读心理测试，已修改,两者都包含相当数量的可用视觉信息。为了实现群体同质性，我们将重点放在女性身上,因为重度抑郁症表现出性别特异性.研究结果表明，面部面具选择性地影响推断的情绪：与典型的发展中的对照组相比，在重度抑郁症中，对悲伤和愤怒的识别更加严重。而对恐惧的认识，幸福,和中立的表达保持不受阻碍。厌恶,被遗忘的精神病学情感，是两组中最不可识别的情绪。在“眼睛阅读”测试中，患者对阳性表达的准确性低于典型的发展中的同龄人，但在负面项目上没有区别。在抑郁和典型的发育中的个体中，识别面具背后的情绪的能力和在眼睛阅读测试中的表现在处理速度上是相互关联的，但不是识别的准确性。结果为理解COVID-19大流行内外阅读眼睛语言的复杂性提供了蓝图。
