Children’s gaze at faces may reveal changing depression risk

A two-year study suggests children’s responses to happy and sad faces shift as depressive symptoms grow, with family history influencing the pattern.

Researchers at Binghamton University say a simple eye-tracking task may help spot children who are more vulnerable to depression before their symptoms deepen. The study suggests that how young people look at happy or sad faces can change as depressive symptoms rise, and that those patterns may differ depending on family history.

In work based at the university’s Mood Disorders Institute, scientists followed 242 children and their mothers for two years, checking in every six months. During each visit, the children were shown pairs of faces on a screen: one neutral and one showing happiness, sadness or anger. Using eye-tracking technology, the team measured which faces drew the children’s attention and for how long.

The findings, described by ScienceDaily as pointing to an early warning sign of risk, suggest that children with a family history of depression became increasingly drawn to sad faces as their own symptoms worsened. Children without that family history showed a different pattern: as depressive symptoms increased, they did not focus more on sadness so much as pay less attention to happy expressions.

That distinction matters, according to Ciara Bogdanovic, a psychotherapist and family therapist who spoke to Newsweek about the study. She said the results suggest depression may shape the way children process emotional information from the people around them, rather than attention biases simply appearing before the illness begins. Bogdanovic added that children in families affected by depression may find negative emotional cues harder to ignore, while positive cues lose their pull.

The broader research fits with earlier studies showing that depressed children and teenagers often pay prolonged attention to sad faces and may struggle to interpret emotional expressions accurately. Other long-term research has also suggested that difficulty recognising happiness in early adolescence can predict later depression. Together, the studies point to a growing body of evidence that subtle changes in attention and facial processing may help clinicians identify risk earlier, especially as children move into the teenage years, when depression becomes more common.

Bogdanovic said parents and carers should still watch for the more familiar signs of childhood depression, including increasing sadness or irritability, withdrawal from friends and activities, sleep or appetite changes, and difficulty concentrating. She noted that in children, depression does not always look like obvious sadness; in some cases, irritability and changes in behaviour may be more noticeable.