Middlebury College, Department of Psychology, Middlebury, VT 05753, USA.
J Anxiety Disord. 2010 Apr;24(3):293-9. doi: 10.1016/j.janxdis.2009.12.006. Epub 2010 Jan 7.
Theoretical and clinical characterizations of attention in PTSD acknowledge the possibility for both hypervigilance and avoidance of trauma-relevant stimuli. This study used eye tracking technology to investigate visual orientation and attention to traumatic and neutral stimuli in nineteen veterans of the Iraq war. Veterans saw slides in which half the screen had a negatively valenced image and half had a neutral image. Negatively valenced stimuli were further divided into stimuli that varied in trauma relevance (either Iraq war or civilian motor vehicle accidents). Veterans reporting relatively higher levels of PSTD symptoms had larger pupils to all negatively valenced pictures and spent more time looking at them than did veterans lower in PTSD symptoms. Veterans higher in PTSD symptoms also showed a trend towards looking first at Iraq images. The findings suggest that post-traumatic pathology is associated with vigilance rather than avoidance when visually processing negatively valenced and trauma-relevant stimuli.
创伤后应激障碍（PTSD）的理论和临床特征承认，个体可能会对创伤相关刺激表现出过度警觉和回避两种倾向。本研究使用眼动追踪技术，调查了 19 名伊拉克战争退伍军人对创伤和中性刺激的视觉定向和注意力。退伍军人观看幻灯片，其中一半屏幕显示的是带有负面情绪的图像，另一半显示的是中性图像。进一步将带有负面情绪的刺激分为与创伤相关（伊拉克战争或民用机动车事故）和不相关的刺激。与 PTSD 症状较低的退伍军人相比，报告 PTSD 症状较高的退伍军人对所有带有负面情绪的图片瞳孔放大，且注视时间更长。PTSD 症状较高的退伍军人也表现出首先观看伊拉克相关图像的趋势。这些发现表明，在视觉处理带有负面情绪和与创伤相关的刺激时，与创伤相关的病理性变化与警觉有关，而不是回避。
