Atypical Visual-Scan Paths of Emotion Recognition in Young Adults with Attention-deficit/hyperactivity Disorder Tendency

The purpose of this study is to investigate the deficient emotion recognition capability by examining atypical face visual-scan paths to facial regions (eyes, nose, mouth) in young adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) tendencies. Two hundreds and ninety two participants were divided into two groups, ADHD tendencies group (n=22) and non-ADHD tendencies group (n=19) according to adult ADHD self-report scale. Participants were instructed to passively view facial expressions in visual-scan path task with eye tracking and selected one of 4 emotions (happy, angry, fearful, sad) in emotion recognition task. Mean dwell time to each facial region, mean reaction time and accuracy of responses for each facial expression were measured. The result showed that ADHD tendencies group had significantly lower accuracy in negative emotions and needed longer time to decide the answer than non-ADHD tendencies group. And ADHD tendencies group gazed shorter to eyes than non-ADHD tendencies group in negative emotions. Therefore, shorter gazing to eyes in individuals with ADHD tendencies can lead to lower accuracy of emotion recognition. These results suggest that it is helpful for ADHD people to encourage to direct their eye gazes for accurate emotion recognition in social contexts.