Detection of people with social phobia using pupillary position classification algorithms

This study analyzes the visual attention of people with and without social phobia toward different images (photos of faces) depicting emotions such as normality, sadness, anger, and happiness. The analysis is divided into four main parts: The first part consists of identifying participants, both those with and without social phobia, using a psychometric instrument known as the BFNE-II. The second part focuses on the presentation of images composed of facial expressions, as well as the detection of the subjects' pupillary positions when observing these images. In the third part, the participants' pupillary positions are classified into characteristic points called fixations. Finally, in the fourth part of the study, these fixations are used as a measure to quantify the visual attention of people with and without social phobia, with the aim of identifying potential biases in both groups. Based on the analysis of visual attention to the different images, it was concluded that people with social phobia showed significantly greater visual attention to facial expressions of anger, compared to those without social phobia. On the other hand, non-phobic people tended to focus their attention primarily on images that depicted happy facial expressions.