{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.0399746192893401, 'fraction_numerical': 0.01692047377326565, 'mean_word_length': 5.125647668393782, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 2, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 2, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
No evidence of attentional bias toward angry faces in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder

Objective: Although attentional bias (AB) toward angry faces is well established in patients with anxiety disorders, it is still poorly studied in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). We investigated whether OCD patients present AB toward angry faces, whether AB is related to symptom severity and whether AB scores are associated with specific OCD symptom dimensions. Method: Forty-eight OCD patients were assessed in clinical evaluations, intelligence testing and a dot-probe AB paradigm that used neutral and angry faces as stimuli. Analyses were performed with a one-sample t-test, Pearson correlations and linear regression. Results: No evidence of AB was observed in OCD patients, nor was there any association between AB and symptom severity or dimension. Psychiatric comorbidity did not affect our results. Conclusion: In accordance with previous studies, we were unable to detect AB in OCD patients. To investigate whether OCD patients have different brain activation patterns from anxiety disorder patients, future studies using a transdiagnostic approach should evaluate AB in OCD and anxiety disorder patients as they perform AB tasks under functional neuroimaging protocols.


Inclusion and exclusion criteria
The inclusion criteria for participants with OCD were: 1-age between 18 and 65 years; 2-to have a primary diagnosis of OCD according to DSM-IV-TR, confirmed by the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I disorders (SCID) (SCID-I;First et al., 1995); 3-Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS) (Goodman et al., 1989) score greater than 16; 4-if medicated, medication should be stable for the last twelve weeks. Exclusion criteria were: comorbidity with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.

Gender, comorbidities and medication
Although the proportion of male participants was almost half of female's in our sample, this difference was not statistically significant (chi-square = 3.00, p-value = 0.083). Moreover, psychiatric comorbidity was a factor that did not affect our results: having comorbid depression, an anxiety disorder (other than GAD) or ADHD (most frequent comorbidity of this sample) did not contribute to AB scores. Finally, medication status could also influence our results, but patients were stable for at least 12 weeks.

Task -Dot Probe Paradigm
Each trial began with a fixation cross ("+") that was presented in the center of the screen for 500 milliseconds (ms). Next, two facial stimuli were shown at the same time (500 ms) and then pursued by a probe (< or >). The participants needed to press the right bottom of the mouse when the probe indicated">" and left bottom when appeared "<". The probe aroused in the location occupied by one of the faces stimuli, at the top or bottom of the screen. The task varied randomly between congruent (probe location behind threat stimuli), incongruent (probe location behind neutral stimuli) and neutral trials (probe location appeared behind any of two neutral stimuli). Of the 120 trials presented, 80 were threat-neutral (40 congruent and 40 incongruent) and 40 neutral-neutral. Response time (RT) was measured in ms and the existence of attentional bias (AB) was calculated by the difference between the RT on congruent and incongruent trials for each participant.
The response latencies provide a 'snapshot' of the distribution of the participants' attention, with faster responses to probe evidently in the attended location to the unattended location. Thus, AB toward angry faces is revealed when participants were faster to respond to probes that replace the threat-related stimuli rather the neutral stimuli. To this end, AB was calculated by subtracting the average congruent RT from the average incongruent stimuli RT from each individual.

Statistical analysis (preprocessing of the data)
Regarding AB scores we have ran habitual steps for cleaning the data, as further described. Initially, we removed trials with incorrect responses; response-times (RT) shorter than 150ms or higher than 2000ms and RT±2.5 standard deviations (SDs) from participant's mean. Neutral-neutral pairs were not included in the analysis. Probes appear with equal probability at the location of threat and neutral stimuli (congruent and incongruent, respectively) and, to measure AB, we subtract congruent from incongruent trials. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/1516-4446-2018-0130 No evidence of attentional bias toward angry faces in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder  17 (35.4%) PTSD = post-traumatic stress disorder; GAD = generalized anxiety disorder; BDD = body dysmorphic disorder; ADHD = attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.