Tracking Emotion: Eye-Tracking Insights into Expressive Flexibilityand Context Sensitivity in Emotional Face Processing

Abstract

Expressive flexibility, a prototypical form of regulatory flexibility, is recognized for its positive impact on social adaptation and mental health. Contextual flexibility is theoretically conceptualized as a crucial component of regulatory flexibility. Despite the link between expressive flexibility and context sensitivity, the extent to which expressive flexibility shapes the dynamic processes of context sensitivity remains insufficiently understood. This study employed a classic visual search paradigm combined with eye-tracking technology to investigate how attentional processes related to context sensitivity differ across varying levels of expressive flexibility. Sixty-five participants (52 females, average age 23.34 ± 2.13 years) with either high or low levels of expressive flexibility completed a visual search task using emotional faces as cues. The findings revealed that individuals with low expressive flexibility (LEF) exhibited delayed detection of negative cues compared to positive ones, whereas those with high expressive flexibility (HEF) showed no significant differences in processing emotional cues of different valences. Moreover, HEF participants demonstrated faster attentional orienting and less prolonged attention to emotional cues compared to their LEF counterparts. These results provide novel insights into the association between individual differences in expressive flexibility and dynamics of context sensitivity.