Looking at and understanding social situations in BPD V1
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Looking at and understanding social situations in borderline personality disorder.
IRAS ID
146518
Contact name
Nicola Gregory
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Bournemouth University
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
Deficits in mentalizing - putting oneself in the “mental shoes” of another - are considered to be a core impairment in borderline personality disorder (BPD) and is a suggested cause of the unstable emotions and interpersonal relationships characteristic of BPD (e.g. Fonagy et al., 2015). Specifically, BPD patients have been described as tending to “hyper-mentalize”: to excessively and inaccurately interpret others’ mental states. Whilst there has been little empirical research conducted to support these theories, some evidence suggests that people with BPD are hyper-sensitive to others’ emotional facial cues (Sharp & Vanwoerden, 2015). In nonclinical individuals and those with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD), mentalizing appears related to visual processing of such cues: People with ASD, who have difficulty with mentalizing, spend less time looking at peoples’ eyes than those without the disorder (Klin et al., 2001), suggesting that focussing on the eyes is important in understanding mental states. The purpose of this project is to use eye-tracking technology to determine for the first time whether people with BPD excessively focus on the social cues of others, particularly the eyes and is so, find evidence of a relationship between this and mentalizing abilities. \nThirty outpatients from Poole Community Mental Health Team with a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder will be recruited via invitation from their consultant psychiatrist. The research project will be conducted at Bournemouth University by two Lecturers in Psychology (one a chartered clinical psychologist).\nParticipants will watch social scenarios on a computer whilst an eye-tracking machine records where they look. They will be asked questions about the mental states of the people in the scenes and their responses will be audio-recorded. An established test of mentalizing will also be completed by the patients, together with three psychometric questionnaires, taking 1.5 hours in total to complete.\n
REC name
South West - Cornwall & Plymouth Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
16/SW/0021
Date of REC Opinion
14 Apr 2016
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion