Abstract
Research on cognitive biases in depression has provided considerable evidence for the impact of emotion on cognition. Individuals with depression tend to preferentially process mood-congruent material and to show deficits in the processing of positive material leading to biases in attention, memory, and judgments. More research is needed, however, to fully understand which cognitive processes are affected. The current study further examines the impact of emotion on cognition using a priming design with facial expressions of emotion. Specifically, this study tested whether the presentation of facial expressions of emotion affects subsequent processing of affective material in participants with major depressive disorder (MDD) and healthy controls (CTL). Facial expressions displaying happy, sad, angry, disgusted, or neutral expressions were presented as primes for 500 ms, and participants' speed to identify a subsequent target's emotional expression was assessed. All participants displayed greater interference from emotional vs. neutral primes, marked by slower response times to judge the emotion of the target face when it was preceded by an emotional prime. Importantly, the CTL group showed the strongest interference when happy emotional expressions served as primes whereas the MDD group failed to show this bias. These results add to a growing literature that shows that depression is associated with difficulties in the processing of positive material.
Highlights
Cognitive theories of depression propose that individuals with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) show mood-congruent cognitive biases, typically giving preference to the processing of negative vs. positive material
Some studies have reported that depressed participants exhibit global deficits when processing facial expressions of emotion (e.g., Feinberg et al, 1986), whereas others indicate that MDD is associated with difficulty identifying specific emotions
BDI scores were analyzed to confirm that MDD participants continued to exhibit high levels of depression at the time the priming task was completed
Summary
Cognitive theories of depression propose that individuals with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) show mood-congruent cognitive biases, typically giving preference to the processing of negative vs. positive material. The presence of a negative stimulus will activate other negative thoughts and memories in depression It is this high degree of interconnectedness of negative vs positive information that is believed to heighten risk for the onset and maintenance of depressive episodes (e.g., Ingram, 1984; Taylor and Ingram, 1999), highlighting the importance of examining the effect of emotion on cognition. Given that negative information is more closely interconnected in depression, cognitive theories propose that depressed compared to control participants will show stronger priming for negative stimuli; priming studies in depression have not yielded consistent results. Some studies have reported that depressed participants exhibit global deficits when processing facial expressions of emotion (e.g., Feinberg et al, 1986), whereas others indicate that MDD is associated with difficulty identifying specific emotions (e.g., happy but not sad; Suslow et al, 2001). Given the substantial evidence suggesting the importance of facial processing in the severity, persistence, and relapse of depressive episodes (e.g., Hale, 1998; Bouhuys et al, 1999a,b), it might be relevant to examine priming effects using facial expressions of emotion
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