Anxiety sensitivity and major depression: examination of affective state dependence.

An emerging body of research suggests that anxiety sensitivity (AS), and particularly a facet of AS labelled fear of cognitive dyscontrol, is elevated in depressed individuals and is associated with severity of depressed mood. The current prospective study extended previous work by investigating the extent of affective state dependency in the AS-depression relationship in 51 patients who had major depressive episode (MDE) at baseline assessment (Time 1) and did not have MDE 1 year later at follow-up (Time 2). Despite considerable reduction in severity of depressed mood, scores on the Anxiety Sensitivity Index (M=27) remained elevated. Hierarchical regression analysis indicated that, after controlling for both Time 1 and Time 2 depression severity, Time 1 AS continued to predict residual Time 2 AS and increased prediction of variance from approximately 25% to 50%. Time 1 fear of cognitive dyscontrol AS continued to significantly predict Time 2 fear of cognitive dyscontrol AS when Time 2 fear of physical symptoms AS was statistically controlled. A subsample of recovered patients who displayed only minimal depression symptoms was compared to a matched sample of community controls. While the two groups did not significantly differ on level of depressed mood, the formerly depressed patients had significantly higher levels of AS. Implications for a proposed "depression sensitivity" are discussed.     

Reduced positive future-thinking in depression: Cognitive and affective factors

A pessimistic view of the future is an important feature of depressive thinking, and appears to be influenced at least as strongly by reduced positive expectancies as it is by increased negative expectancies. The present study examined whether reduced positive future-thinking in depression could be accounted for by a reduced capacity to anticipate experiencing pleasure. Depressed and nondepressed participants were asked to generate positive future expectancies using a future-thinking task, and their capacity to anticipate experiencing pleasure in such events was also assessed. Depressed participants provided fewer anticipated positive experiences, a finding which was not accountable for by their reduced pleasure ratings. This reduced positive anticipation was related to levels of depression but not to levels of anxiety. The results are consistent with the view that the lack of anticipated positive experiences in depression arises from a difficulty in accessing mental representations of such experiences.     

Recollecting naturally-occurring intentions: A study of cognitive and affective factors

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the recall of naturally-occurring intentions during the interval between their formulation and their enactment, hours, days, or months later. When these intentions were spontaneously recalled, subjects recorded the prevailing cognitive and affective circumstances, and current events and actions. This task was undertaken for a period of five consecutive days. A subsequent task elicited similar information from the same subjects, on randomly sampled occasions that did not coincide with the recall of an intention, during a comparable time period. The results indicate that on occasions on which subjects report these spontaneous recollections, they often judge themselves to be concentrating less on a concurrent activity mat requires less attention, compared to occasions on which behaviour is randomly sampled. The results suggest also that this prototypical ‘recollective state’ may vary with the type of intention that is recalled. The advantages and disadvantages of the methodology adopted in this study for research on prospective memory processes are considered.     

Relationships among affective and cognitive factors in humor

One hundred and twenty-five college students rated a total of 74 jokes, chosen by stratified sampling, on funniness and on 13 other scales suggested by humor theories. Highly similar factor structures were found with two sets of jokes. Ratings of surprise, resolution, and originality correlated strongly with funniness and helped define a factor on which funniness ratings loaded. Scales pertaining to painfulness, anxiety, or importance of joke topic were positively correlated with funniness but defined a factor essentially independent of it. Partial correlations suggested that these scales were related to funniness through their common relationship with incongruity and resolution scales. Ratings of how much a joke made subjects “feel free” correlated much more highly with ratings of incongruity and resolution than with ratings of painfulness, anxiety, or importance of joke topic. Results were interpreted as providing support for an incongruity-resolution theory of humor, and for the interdependency of affective factors with incongruity-resolution mechanisms.     

The ABCs of depression: integrating affective, biological, and cognitive models to explain the emergence of the gender difference in depression

In adulthood, twice as many women as men are depressed, a pattern that holds in most nations. In childhood, girls are no more depressed than boys, but more girls than boys are depressed by ages 13 to 15. Although many influences on this emergent gender difference in depression have been proposed, a truly integrated, developmental model is lacking. The authors propose a model that integrates affective (emotional reactivity), biological (genetic vulnerability, pubertal hormones, pubertal timing and development) and cognitive (cognitive style, objectified body consciousness, rumination) factors as vulnerabilities to depression that, in interaction with negative life events, heighten girls' rates of depression beginning in adolescence and account for the gender difference in depression.     

Childhood depression and conduct disorder: I. Behavioral, affective, and cognitive aspects of family problem-solving interactions.

We assessed the family interactions of depressed, conduct-disordered, mixed depressed-conduct-disordered, and nonclinic children, ages 7-14 years, during a standardized family problem-solving discussion in the clinic. The child's and the mother's problem-solving proficiency, aversive behavior, and associated affective behavior (depressed and angry-hostile) were observed. The child and mother also rated each other's affect during the interaction for the dimensions sad, angry, critical, and happy on Likert-type scales. The child's and mother's cognitive constructions about the interaction were assessed using video-mediated recall. Although all clinic groups had lower levels of effective problem solving than did nonclinic children, their deficiencies were somewhat different. Mixed and depressed children displayed high levels of depressed affect and low levels of angry affect, whereas conduct-disordered children displayed both angry and depressed affect. In addition, conduct-disordered children had lower levels of positive problem solving and higher levels of aversive content than did non-conduct-disordered children. Depressed and conduct-disordered children had higher levels of self-referent negative cognitions than did mixed and comparison children, and depressed children also had higher other-referent negative cognitions than did all other groups. The study provides support for theories and treatment that stress the importance of family problem-solving and conflict resolution skills in child psychopathology.     

Stress modulation of cognitive and affective processes

This review summarizes the major discussion points of a symposium on stress modulation of cognitive and affective processes, which was held during the 2010 workshop on the neurobiology of stress (Boulder, CO, USA). The four discussants addressed a number of specific cognitive and affective factors that are modulated by exposure to acute or repeated stress. Dr David Morilak discussed the effects of various repeated stress situations on cognitive flexibility, as assessed with a rodent model of attentional set-shifting task, and how performance on slightly different aspects of this test is modulated by different prefrontal regions through monoaminergic neurotransmission. Dr Serge Campeau summarized the findings of several studies exploring a number of factors and brain regions that regulate habituation of various autonomic and neuroendocrine responses to repeated audiogenic stress exposures. Dr Kerry Ressler discussed a body of work exploring the modulation and extinction of fear memories in rodents and humans, especially focusing on the role of key neurotransmitter systems including excitatory amino acids and brain-derived neurotrophic factor. Dr Israel Liberzon presented recent results on human decision-making processes in response to exogenous glucocorticoid hormone administration. Overall, these discussions are casting a wider framework on the cognitive/affective processes that are distinctly regulated by the experience of stress and some of the brain regions and neurotransmitter systems associated with these effects.     

The affective regulation of cognitive priming

Semantic and affective priming are classic effects observed in cognitive and social psychology, respectively. The authors discovered that affect regulates such priming effects. In Experiment 1, positive and negative moods were induced before one of three priming tasks; evaluation, categorization, or lexical decision. As predicted, positive affect led to both affective priming (evaluation task) and semantic priming (category and lexical decision tasks). However, negative affect inhibited such effects. In Experiment 2, participants in their natural affective state completed the same priming tasks as in Experiment 1. As expected, affective priming (evaluation task) and category priming (categorization and lexical decision tasks) were observed in such resting affective states. Hence, the authors conclude that negative affect inhibits semantic and affective priming. These results support recent theoretical models, which suggest that positive affect promotes associations among strong and weak concepts, and that negative affect impairs such associations (Clore & Storbeck, 2006; Kuhl, 2000).     

A cognitive and an affective dimension of alexithymia in six languages and seven populations

The Dutch Bermond–Vorst Alexithymia Questionnaire (BVAQ) is translated into various languages. The aim of this research was to establish the factor structure of subscales on seven cultural groups. The BVAQ consists of five subscales of eight items each: Emotionalising, Fantasising, Analysing, Identifying, and Verbalising emotions. The BVAQ was administered to a group of Dutch students (n=375), a group of English students (n=175), a group of Australian students, university employees and visitors (n=216), a group of French speaking Belgian students (n=175), a group of Italian people (n=791; a mix of various clinical groups), a group of Polish people (n=427; also a mix of various clinical groups) and a group of Russian people (n=141; general population). The hypothesised two-factor structure of an affective alexithymia dimension (Emotionalising, Fantasising) and a cognitive alexithymia dimension (Insight and Verbalising), with “Analysing emotions” loading on both factors, was clearly supported by confirmatory factor analyses (CFA). Both orthogonal and oblique principal components analyses (PCA), without restriction concerning the number of factors, provided the same two-factor solution in all groups explaining between 55% and 64% of the variance. Oblique rotation further demonstrated that the correlations between these two factors were low in all populations. The combined CFA and PCA results, therefore, indicated that a model with two independent factors has to be preferred over the model assuming two correlated factors.     

Vulnerability-specific stress generation: an examination of depressogenic cognitive vulnerability across multiple domains

Background and Objectives: Although there is supporting evidence for the stress generation hypothesis (i.e., the tendency for depression-prone individuals to experience more negative dependent events influenced by their behaviors and characteristics), additional research is required to advance current understanding of the specific types of dependent events relevant to this effect. The present study elaborated on the stress generation hypothesis, in which the content of negative dependent events experienced by individuals is contingent upon, and matches, the nature of their particular vulnerabilities. This extension was tested within the context of Cole's competency-based model of depression. Design: Participants (n = 185) were assessed at two time-points separated by a four-month interval. Methods: Self-perceived competence in academic, social, and appearance domains at the initial time-point were examined in relation to negative life events prospectively occurring over the four-month follow-up period, assessed using the “contextual threat” method. Results: Partial support was obtained for vulnerability-specific stress generation. Stress-generation specificity was found for self-perceived competence in appearance and academic domains, but not for self-perceived social competence. Conclusions: The current findings are consistent with the possibility of a more complex relation between self-perceived social competence and domain-congruent stress generation. Individuals may be more likely to experience negative dependent events in domains matching their specific vulnerabilities.     

Facial affect processing and depression susceptibility: cognitive biases and cognitive neuroscience

Facial affect processing is essential to social development and functioning and is particularly relevant to models of depression. Although cognitive and interpersonal theories have long described different pathways to depression, cognitive-interpersonal and evolutionary social risk models of depression focus on the interrelation of interpersonal experience, cognition, and social behavior. We therefore review the burgeoning depressive facial affect processing literature and examine its potential for integrating disciplines, theories, and research. In particular, we evaluate studies in which information processing or cognitive neuroscience paradigms were used to assess facial affect processing in depressed and depression-susceptible populations. Most studies have assessed and supported cognitive models. This research suggests that depressed and depression-vulnerable groups show abnormal facial affect interpretation, attention, and memory, although findings vary based on depression severity, comorbid anxiety, or length of time faces are viewed. Facial affect processing biases appear to correspond with distinct neural activity patterns and increased depressive emotion and thought. Biases typically emerge in depressed moods but are occasionally found in the absence of such moods. Indirect evidence suggests that childhood neglect might cultivate abnormal facial affect processing, which can impede social functioning in ways consistent with cognitive-interpersonal and interpersonal models. However, reviewed studies provide mixed support for the social risk model prediction that depressive states prompt cognitive hypervigilance to social threat information. We recommend prospective interdisciplinary research examining whether facial affect processing abnormalities promote-or are promoted by-depressogenic attachment experiences, negative thinking, and social dysfunction.