B - 58 Emotional Attention and Psychological Outcomes: Insights from Eye-Tracking in Vietnam Veterans

Abstract Objective The mood-congruency hypothesis suggests that an individual’s attentional resources align with their current emotional state. We investigated whether attention to emotion-eliciting stimuli, as measured by eye-tracking, could be associated with psychological outcomes in Vietnam Veterans. Method We enrolled 117 Vietnam-theater Veterans (MeanAge = 69.5 years; SD = 3.4 years) and measured time to first fixation (TFF) and total fixation duration (TFD) while participants viewed emotional human faces (HAPPY, SAD, ANGRY) paired with neutral expressions (NEUTRAL). Participants completed 60 trials for different emotion-neutral pairs and completed self-report measures of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) using the PTSD Checklist-5 (PCL-5) and posttraumatic growth (PTG) using the PTG Inventory. Linear fixed-effects models (MATLAB, R2023a) were employed to examine self-report measures, focusing on attentional bias toward emotional faces in Model-1, and considering both emotional and neutral faces in Model-2. Results In Model-1, PTG was negatively related to TFF on HAPPY (p < 0.05), but positively related to TFD on SAD (p < 0.001). These findings align with PTG theory, suggesting that struggling with negative emotions may stimulate PTG. Moreover, PTSD symptom severity was negatively associated with TFF on HAPPY (p < 0.05) and positively associated with TFF on NEUTRAL (p < 0.01). In Model-2, greater PTG was associated with longer TFD on both HAPPY (p < 0.05) and NEUTRAL (p < 0.001). Interestingly, greater PTSD symptom severity was associated with longer TFD on HAPPY (p < 0.05) and NEUTRAL (p < 0.001) stimuli. Conclusions Our findings highlight the complex relationship between attentional allocation, emotional stimuli, and psychological outcomes in Vietnam Veterans. Future research will explore these dynamics and the clinical utility of eye tracking.