Depression versus anxiety: Processing of self- and other-referent information

Abstract

Depression and anxiety are psychopathological states that have been closely related in clinical. empirical. and theoretical investigations. Cognitive approaches to the emotional disorders suggest that depressed and anxious individuals can be differentiated on the basis of the specific content of their self-referent judgements and information processing. The present investigation provided a stringent test of the content-specificity hypothesis by iomparing depressed. anxious. and nondepressed-nonanxious subjects' processing of positive and negative depression-relevant, anxiety-relevant. and control content adjectives for themselves and a well-known other (their best friends). Based on judgement and reaction time measures. the content-specificity hypothesis was supported. Depressed subjects were unique in exhibiting balanced endorsements and processing of positive and negative traits. suggesting that they possessed self-schematil with mixed positive and negative content. In contrast. anxious subjects were unique in ascribing more negative than positive anxiety-relevant traits to themselves and in processing negative anxiety-relevant traits fitstcr than depression-relevant traits. In addition. depressed and anxious subjects' self-referent processing was specific to the self: both groups' judgements were more negative for themselves than for their best friends. The findings are discussed with regard to their implications for cognitive differences between depression and anxiety and the specificity of the “depressive evenhandedness” effect.     

Cognitive specificity in emotional distress

Cognitive approaches to emotional distress posit that specific cognitive factors are critically linked to the etiology, course, or treatment of dysfunction. Although a number of empirical studies have assessed cognitive factors in emotional disorders such as depression and anxiety, research has yet to assess these variables simultaneously and with identical cognitive measures. Using depression and test anxiety as models of dysfunctional affective states, we examined cognitive specificity on measures of information processing, attributions, automatic thinking, and cognitive interference. Results indicated a pattern of specificity showing several differences and similarities in depression and anxiety. Specifically, "purely" depressed individuals showed evidence of selectively processing depressive information, making dysfunctional attributions, and engaging in more negative automatic thinking. "Purely" anxious individuals, on the other hand, showed evidence of selective anxious information processing and increased cognitive interference. Results are discussed in terms of a taxonomy for classifying depressive and anxious cognition.     

Autobiographical memory characteristics in depression vulnerability: formerly depressed individuals recall less vivid positive memories

The differential activation hypothesis (DAH; Teasdale, 1988) proposes that individuals who are vulnerable to depression can be distinguished from non-vulnerable individuals by the degree to which negative thoughts and maladaptive cognitive processes are activated during sad mood. While retrieval of negative autobiographical memories is noted as one such process, the model does not articulate a role for deficits in recalling positive memories. Two studies were conducted to compare the autobiographical memory characteristics of never-depressed and formerly depressed individuals following a sad mood induction. In Study 1, features of negative memories of never-depressed and formerly depressed individuals did not differ, either in neutral or sad mood. For positive memories, groups did not differ in neutral mood, but following a sad mood induction, formerly depressed individuals rated their positive memories as less vivid than their never-depressed counterparts. Study 2 examined positive autobiographical memory features more comprehensively and replicated the finding that in a sad mood formerly depressed individuals recalled less vivid positive memories than never-depressed controls. These findings suggest that the phenomenological features of positive memories could represent an important factor in depressive vulnerability, and, more broadly, that depression may be associated with a deficit in the processing of positive material.     

Autobiographical memory characteristics in depression vulnerability: Formerly depressed individuals recall less vivid positive memories

The differential activation hypothesis (DAH; Teasdale, 1988) proposes that individuals who are vulnerable to depression can be distinguished from non-vulnerable individuals by the degree to which negative thoughts and maladaptive cognitive processes are activated during sad mood. While retrieval of negative autobiographical memories is noted as one such process, the model does not articulate a role for deficits in recalling positive memories. Two studies were conducted to compare the autobiographical memory characteristics of never-depressed and formerly depressed individuals following a sad mood induction. In Study 1, features of negative memories of never-depressed and formerly depressed individuals did not differ, either in neutral or sad mood. For positive memories, groups did not differ in neutral mood, but following a sad mood induction, formerly depressed individuals rated their positive memories as less vivid than their never-depressed counterparts. Study 2 examined positive autobiographical memory features more comprehensively and replicated the finding that in a sad mood formerly depressed individuals recalled less vivid positive memories than never-depressed controls. These findings suggest that the phenomenological features of positive memories could represent an important factor in depressive vulnerability, and, more broadly, that depression may be associated with a deficit in the processing of positive material.     

Mood-induced changes on the Implicit Association Test in recovered depressed patients

A mood induction paradigm was used to examine dysphoria-related changes in two types of cognitive processing in individuals who had previously experienced depression. Formerly depressed patients (n = 23) and never-depressed controls (n = 27) completed the Dysfunctional Attitudes Scale, a self-report measure of effortful processing, and performed the Implicit Association Test, an automatic-reaction time task that measures evaluative bias, before and after a negative-mood induction. The formerly depressed group showed both an increase in endorsement of dysfunctional attitudes and a more negative evaluative bias for self-relevant information after the induction, relative to controls--however, there was no association between the mood-linked changes observed on these two measures. The shift in evaluative bias shown by the formerly depressed group was similar to that seen in a group of 32 currently depressed individuals. These findings suggest that even a mild negative mood in formerly depressed individuals can reinstate some of the cognitive features observed in depression itself.     

Cognitive and neural consequences of memory suppression in major depressive disorder

Negative biases in cognition have been documented consistently in major depressive disorder (MDD), including difficulties in the ability to control the processing of negative material. Although negative information-processing biases have been studied using both behavioral and neuroimaging paradigms, relatively little research has been conducted examining the difficulties of depressed persons with inhibiting the retrieval of negative information from long-term memory. In this study, we used the think/no-think paradigm and functional magnetic resonance imaging to assess the cognitive and neural consequences of memory suppression in individuals diagnosed with depression and in healthy controls. The participants showed typical behavioral forgetting effects, but contrary to our hypotheses, there were no differences between the depressed and nondepressed participants or between neutral and negative memories. Relative to controls, depressed individuals exhibited greater activity in right middle frontal gyrus during memory suppression, regardless of the valence of the suppressed stimuli, and differential activity in the amygdala and hippocampus during memory suppression involving negatively valenced stimuli. These findings indicate that depressed individuals are characterized by neural anomalies during the suppression of long-term memories, increasing our understanding of the brain bases of negative cognitive biases in MDD.     

Cognitive reactivity and depressotypic information processing in children of depressed mothers.

Although high-risk research suggests that children of depressed mothers are at increased risk for psychological disorders, the mechanisms of this risk are not well understood. In the current study, the information processing of children of depressed mothers was compared with that of children whose mothers were not depressed. Half of each group received a priming induction designed to activate cognitive schemas prior to assessment. All children then completed a self-referent processing task that examined the recall of negative and positive information. Results indicate that when primed, at-risk children showed a less positive self-concept and more negative information processing than did the children in the other groups. These data may offer potential clues into the mechanisms of cognitive vulnerability in at-risk children.     

抑郁的内隐认知与治疗

认知模型认为抑郁个体存在认知加工的偏向,但是,相对于外显认知,抑郁的内隐认知研究较少。现有研究表明：抑郁个体沉迷于特定的内隐认知偏向：抑郁个体倾向于注意环境中的负性刺激;在概念驱动内隐记忆测验中表现出偏向;更可能呈现出无望感的内隐态度。内隐认知可能是抑郁个体维持抑郁的重要因素,在治疗中,可采用知觉内隐认知、扩展功能失调思维记录、记忆日志和增进注意控制等认知技术改变抑郁患者的内隐认知偏向。     

抑郁症状中学生自我相关生活事件的回忆、再认和启动效应特点

采用Tversky的实验设计,对非抑郁和抑郁症状中学生的回忆、再认和启动效应进行了探讨。实验发现,抑郁症状中学生对自我相关生活事件信息加工存在负性回忆、负性再认、负性启动和负性加工偏向;抑郁症状中学生对自我相关生活事件信息加工的回忆具有情境一致性;对再认材料的不同加工深度影响抑郁症状中学生自我相关生活事件信息加工的再认;抑郁症状中学生对自我相关生活事件信息加工的负性启动主要是由于对负性条目、中性条目的负性偏向加工引起     

Deployment of attention in clinical depression during symptom remission

The purpose of the current study was to investigate deployment of attention in clinically depressed patients during the process of symptom remission. Previous research indicates a non-depressed protective bias in attention whereas depressed individuals evidence no bias. A deployment-of-attention task based on negative, positive, and neutral adjectives was administered twice to 15 inpatients with major depression and 15 normal controls, at about 6 weeks apart. From test 1 to test 2, severity of patients' depressive symptoms improved significantly. Acutely depressed patients tended to show an attentional bias towards negative information whereas partially remitted patients manifested no attentional bias. Non-depressed individuals attended less to negative information than (acutely and partially remitted) depressed patients. Non-depressed participants but not depressed patients avoid negative information demonstrating a protective processing bias. Depressed patients are not characterized by a shift towards a pronounced protective pattern during symptom remission.     

Specificity of Information Processing Styles to Depressive Symptoms in Youth Psychiatric Inpatients

Although information processing has been widely studied with depressed adults, little emphasis has been placed on the specificity of resultant findings to depression, as opposed to other psychological disorders. Analogously, even less effort has been directed toward examining the information processing styles of depressed children and adolescents. The present study investigated the specificity of information processing styles to depression and anxiety among 58 youth psychiatric inpatients. To assess information processing, we used a self-referent encoding task, in which participants were presented with positive and negative adjectives; participants were asked whether these adjectives described them or not, and were then tested on recall of the adjectives. After controlling for age and gender, lower rates of positive adjective endorsement and lower rates of positive adjective recall were found to be associated with depression, but not anxiety. Additionally, negative adjective endorsement was associated with anxiety symptoms. These results suggest specific cognitive features of depressive symptoms.     

Interpretation of ambiguous information in clinical depression

The present study used two cognitive tasks--a text comprehension task and a homophone task--to investigate whether clinically depressed individuals have a negative bias when interpreting ambiguous information. Previous research indicates that both tasks are sensitive to anxiety-related interpretive biases, and that the former is less prone to response bias effects. Negative memory biases were also assessed. Results showed that, compared with normal controls, depressed individuals made more negative interpretations on the homophone task, and they also showed an enhanced negative recall bias. However, the groups did not differ in interpretative bias on the text comprehension task. Possible explanations of the results are discussed, including the potential influences of self-referent processing and response bias.     

Vulnerability to depression: cognitive reactivity and parental bonding in high-risk individuals

Although various conceptual proposals have suggested that disruptions in childhood bonding processes may be linked to the origins of these cognitive structures, little research has tested these proposals. This study assessed the information processing of vulnerable individuals and its relationship to childhood bonding. Formerly depressed (vulnerable) and never depressed (nonvulnerable) individuals participated in a mood induction task followed by an attentional allocation task. Results indicated that vulnerable individuals uniquely diverted attention toward negative stimuli when they were in a negative mood. Furthermore, level of maternal caring was found to be associated with performance on this task for vulnerable individuals in this mood state. These data support the idea that cognitive variables form a pathway between troublesome parental-child/adolescent interactions and depression.     

Parent and peer attachment in early adolescent depression

Insecure attachment relations have been theorized to play a significant role in the development of depressogenic modes of adaptation and to thus form a vulnerability factor for the emergence of depressive disorder in children. This study examined security of parent and peer attachment among four groups of early adolescents: clinically depressed, nondepressed psychiatric controls, nonpsychiatric controls, and adolescents with resolved depression. Depressed adolescents reported significantly less secure parent attachment than either of the control groups, and less secure peer attachment than the nonpsychiatric control group. Attachment security of adolescents with resolved depression was on a par with the nonpsychiatric control group. Among all psychiatric patients, security of attachment to parents was negatively correlated with severity of depression according to interview and self-report ratings. Less secure attachment to parents, but generally not to peers, was also related to more maladaptive attributional styles, presence of separation anxiety disorder, and history of suicidal ideation.     

Profile of Mood States: Australian normative data

The Profile of Mood States was administered to 90 Australian women, 30 depressed, 30 anxious, and 30 nonpsychiatric controls. Both clinical groups scored higher than the McNair, Lorr, and Droppleman (1971) normative samples on the negative mood states and scored lower on Vigor. The means for these groups are presented and compared with the 1971 normative data of McNair, Lorr, and Droppleman.     

Interpretation of Ambiguous Information in Girls at Risk for Depression

Research has consistently documented that depressed individuals process information in a negatively biased manner. There is little evidence, however, concerning whether these biases represent risk factors for depression, as is hypothesized by cognitive models. In the present study we investigated whether a particular cognitive bias observed in currently depressed individuals, the tendency to interpret ambiguous information negatively, characterizes daughters of depressed mothers, a population known to be at increased risk for depression. Following a negative mood induction, young daughters of depressed and never-disordered mothers completed two information-processing tasks in which their interpretations of emotionally ambiguous stimuli were evaluated. Daughters of depressed mothers interpreted ambiguous words more negatively and less positively, and ambiguous stories more negatively, than did daughters of never-disordered mothers. These results provide support for cognitive vulnerability models of depression.     

Selective attention to emotional faces following recovery from depression

This study was designed to examine attentional biases in the processing of emotional faces in currently and formerly depressed participants and healthy controls. Using a dot-probe task, the authors presented faces expressing happy or sad emotions paired with emotionally neutral faces. Whereas both currently and formerly depressed participants selectively attended to the sad faces, the control participants selectively avoided the sad faces and oriented toward the happy faces, a positive bias that was not observed for either of the depressed groups. These results indicate that attentional biases in the processing of emotional faces are evident even after individuals have recovered from a depressive episode. Implications of these findings for understanding the roles of cognitive and interpersonal functioning in depression are discussed.     

Activation of latent self-schemas as a cognitive vulnerability factor for depression: The potential role of implicit self-esteem

To date, only two studies have investigated implicit self-esteem in depressed individuals. Surprisingly, both studies found evidence not in line with the cognitive theory of depression. We wanted to test whether these findings are replicable by investigating implicit self-esteem using the Implicit Association Test in currently depressed (CD), never depressed controls (ND), and formerly depressed individuals (FD). The latter two groups were tested before and after a negative mood induction. The results are in line with the previous two studies suggesting no difference in implicit self-esteem between CD patients and ND controls. Moreover, before mood induction, FD individuals evidenced a higher implicit self-esteem as compared to the two other groups. Compared to ND participants, FD individuals showed a significant drop in implicit self-esteem after the negative mood induction procedure, but this was due to the higher implicit self-esteem of FD before the mood induction. These results are discussed in the light of new perspectives on implicit self-esteem and depression.