Selective attention and avoidance on a pictorial cueing task during stress in clinically anxious and depressed participants

Although it is well established that attentional biases exist in anxious populations, the specific components of visual orienting towards and away from emotional stimuli are not well delineated. The present study was designed to examine these processes. We used a modified spatial cueing task to assess the speed of engagement and disengagement from supraliminal and masked pictorial cues depicting threat, dysphoria, or neutral content in 36 clinically anxious, 41 depressed and 41 control participants. Participants were randomly assigned to a stress or neutral condition. During stress, anxious participants were slow to disengage from masked left hemifield pictures depicting threat or dysphoria, but were quick to disengage from supraliminal threat pictures. Information processing in anxious participants during stress was characterized by early selective attention of emotional stimuli, occurring prior to full conscious awareness, followed by effortful avoidance of threat. Depressed participants were distinct from the anxious group, displaying selective attention for stimuli depicting dysphoria, but not threat, during the neutral condition. In sum, attentional biases in clinical populations are associated with difficulties in the disengagement component of visual orienting. Further, a vigilant-avoidant pattern of attentional bias may represent a strategic attempt to compensate for the early activation of a fear response.     

Organizational Justice,Change Anxiety,and Acceptance of Downsizing: Preliminary Tests of an AET-Based Model

This study tested an AET-based model that integrates cognitions (justice perceptions) and emotions (change anxiety) to explain the effects of change program characteristics on employees' acceptance of downsizing and other work attitudes. Seventy-one employees from an organization that was undergoing downsizing participated in the study. Path analyses and a Q index of .992 offered preliminary support for the proposed model by showing that procedural justice and change anxiety explained the effects of change management procedures on acceptance of downsizing, while interactional justice and change anxiety explained the effects of the quality of change communications on trust in the change managers. Although distributive justice did not have the predicted direct effect on employee morale, it helped explain the effects of procedures on acceptance of change and morale by helping reduce anxiety about the change. Together, these findings support the utility of an AET-based framework in helping understand employee responses to downsizing.     

Social neuroscience of child and adolescent depression

The social neuroscience of child and adolescent depression is inherently multidisciplinary. Depressive disorders beginning early in life can have serious developmental and functional consequences. Psychopathology research has described depression's defining clinical and contextual features, and intervention research has characterized its response to treatment and prevention programs. Neuroendocrine, electrophysiological, and neuroimaging studies have identified core neurobiological aspects of early-onset mood disorders. These areas are reviewed using a developmental social neuroscience perspective for integrating disparate observations. The paper introduces a dynamic adaptive systems framework, and it discusses hedonic capacity, stress sensitivity, ruminative self-focus, and attentional impairments as fundamental components of mood disorders.     

Using online social media,Facebook, in screening for major depressive disorder among college students

This study explored the feasibility of using Internet social networking media in an online program for Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) screening and psychoeducation targeting college students. A Facebook advertisement targeted students at five colleges in the United States to complete a mental health research survey that screened for MDD using the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9). Students who screened positive for MDD were offered an eightweek follow-up survey. Of the 259 students who consented to participate in the study, 26.7% screened positive for MDD, while only 14.2% were receiving treatment. The use of Facebook to advertise for online screening for MDD required very little start-up time, and the average cost was $11.45 per subject recruited. It is feasible to use online, commercially available social networking media such as Facebook for online screening for MDD among college students. However, conducting online screening and offering treatment resources alone did not increase treatment rate in this population.     

Discovery of a Partner Affair and Major Depressive Episode in a Probability Sample of Married or Cohabiting Adults

Prior research has found that humiliating marital events are associated with depression. Building on this research, the current study investigated the association between one specific humiliating marital event—discovering that one's partner had an affair—and past‐year major depressive episode (MDE) in a probability sample of married or cohabiting men and women who were at high risk for depression based on the criterion that they scored below the midpoint on a measure of marital satisfaction (N = 227). Results indicate that (i) women were more likely than men to report discovering their partner had an affair in the prior 12 months; (ii) discovering a partner affair was associated with a higher prevalence of past‐year MDE and a lower level of marital adjustment; and (iii) the association between discovering a partner affair and MDE remained statistically significant when holding constant demographic variables and marital adjustment. These results support continued investigation into the impact that finding out about an affair has on the mental health of the person discovering a partner affair.     

Perseverative thought: a robust predictor of response to emotional challenge in generalized anxiety disorder and major depressive disorder

Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and major depressive disorder (MDD) frequently co-occur, yet the reasons for their comorbidity remain poorly understood. In the present experiment, we tested whether a tendency to engage in negative, repetitive thinking constitutes a common risk process for the two disorders. A mixed sample of adults with comorbid GAD–MDD (n = 50), GAD only (n = 35), MDD only (n = 34), or no lifetime psychopathology (n = 35) was administered noncontingent failure and success feedback on consecutive performance tasks. Perseverative thought (PT), measured by negative thought intrusions during a baseline period of focused breathing, emerged as a powerful prospective predictor of responses to this experimental challenge. Participants reporting more frequent negative thought intrusions at baseline, irrespective of thought content or diagnostic status, exhibited a stronger negative response to failure that persisted even after subsequent success. Higher PT over the course of the experiment was associated with later behavioral avoidance, with negative affect and other traits closely linked to anxiety and depression, and with the presence and severity of GAD and MDD. These findings provide evidence for a broadly-defined PT trait that is shared by GAD and MDD and contributes to adverse outcomes in these disorders.     

Enduring cognitive dysfunction in unipolar major depression: A test–retest study using the Stroop paradigm

Hammar, Å., Sørensen, L., Årdal, G., Oedegaard, K.J., Kroken, R., Roness, A. & Lund, A. (2009). Enduring cognitive dysfunction in unipolar major depression: A test–retest study using the Stroop‐paradigm. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology. The aim of the study was to investigate automatic and effortful information processing with the Stroop paradigm in a long term perspective in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD). Patients were tested at two test occasions: at inclusion with a Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS) score >18, and after 6 months, when most patients had experienced symptom reduction. The Stroop paradigm is considered to measure aspects of attention and executive functioning and consists of three conditions/cards: naming the color of the patches (Color), reading of the color‐words (Word) and naming the ink color of color‐words (Color‐Word). The Color‐Word condition is proved to be the most cognitive demanding task and requires the proband to actively suppress interference and is therefore considered to require more effortful information processing, whereas naming the color of the patches and reading the color‐words are expected to be more automatic and less cognitive demanding. A homogenous group of 19 patients with unipolar recurrent MDD according to DSM‐IV and a HDRS score of >18 were included in the study. A control group was individually matched for age, gender and level of education. Depressed patients performed equal to the control group on the Color and Word cards at both test occasions. However, the patients were impaired compared with the control group on the Color‐Word card task at both test occasions. Thus, the depressed patients showed no improvement of effortful attention/executive performance as a function of symptom reduction. The results indicate that the depressed patients showed impaired cognitive performance on cognitive demanding tasks when symptomatic and that this impairment prevailed after 6 months, despite significant improvement in their depressive symptoms.     

Cognitive biases in processing infant emotion by women with depression,anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder in pregnancy or after birth: A systematic review

Perinatal psychological problems such as post-natal depression are associated with poor mother–baby interaction, but the reason for this is not clear. One explanation is that mothers with negative mood have biased processing of infant emotion. This review aimed to synthesise research on processing of infant emotion by pregnant or post-natal women with anxiety, depression or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Systematic searches were carried out on 11 electronic databases using terms related to negative affect, childbirth and perception of emotion. Fourteen studies were identified which looked at the effect of depression, anxiety and PTSD on interpretation of infant emotional expressions (k = 10), or reaction times when asked to ignore emotional expressions (k = 4). Results suggest mothers with depression and anxiety are more likely to identify negative emotions (i.e., sadness) and less accurate at identifying positive emotions (i.e., happiness) in infant faces. Additionally, women with depression may disengage faster from positive and negative infant emotional expressions. Very few studies examined PTSD (k = 2), but results suggest biases towards specific infant emotions may be influenced by characteristics of the traumatic event. The implications of this research for mother–infant interaction are explored.     

Impaired social learning in patients with major depressive disorder revealed by a reinforcement learning model

Background/objectivePatients with major depressive disorder (MDD) have altered learning rates for rewards and losses in non-social learning paradigms. However, it is not well understood whether the ability to learn from social interactions is altered in MDD patients. Using reinforcement learning during the repeated Trust Game (rTG), we investigated how MDD patients learn to trust newly-met partners in MDD patients.MethodSixty-eight MDD patients and fifty-four controls each played as ‘investor’ and interacted with ten different partners. We manipulated both the level of trustworthiness by varying the chance of reciprocity (10, 30, 50, 70 and 90%) and reputation disclosure, where partners’ reputation was either pre-disclosed or hidden.ResultsOur reinforcement learning model revealed that MDD patients had significantly higher learning rates for losses than the controls in both the reputation disclosure and non-disclosure condition. The difference was larger when reputation was not disclosed than disclosed. We observed no difference in learning rates for gains in either condition.ConclusionsOur findings highlight that abnormal learning for losses underlies the social learning process in MDD patients. This abnormality is higher when situational unpredictability is high versus low. Our findings provide novel insights into social rehabilitation of MDD.