Abstract
This study investigated biases for negative–positive information in component processes of visual attention (initial shift vs. maintenance of gaze) among women in late pregnancy with or without depressive symptoms. Eye movements were recorded while participants viewed a series of picture pairs depicting negative, positive, and neutral scenes. Initial orienting (latency and percentage of first fixation) and gaze duration were computed. Compared with neutral pictures, the group with major depressive symptoms (MDS) were less able to sense the positive emotion-related pictures and were over-responsive to negative emotion-related pictures. The group with suspicious depressive symptoms (SDS) had an attention bias toward both positive and negative emotion-related pictures. The group with no depressive symptoms (NDS) had an attention bias toward positive emotion-related pictures and had an initial attention avoidance tendency for negative emotion-related pictures. The initial gaze direction bias score for negative emotion-related pictures was positively correlated with the severity of depressive symptoms. Therefore, women with a risk of perinatal depression have a significant bias toward negative stimuli. Hypervigilant emotion processing during pregnancy may increase a woman’s susceptibility to depression during late pregnancy. Attention away from negative information or attention toward positive information may provide a way of buffering emotional responses.
Highlights
Depression is common during pregnancy, with up to 70% of women reporting symptoms of depression during pregnancy and 10–16% fulfilling the criteria for major depressive disorder [1]
The current study is important, because it incorporates eye-tracking technology and because it is the first study to investigate positive and negative image processing biases among women with depression disorder-related symptoms who are in the late stage of pregnancy
The present approach may contribute to the understanding of the possible factors predisposing pregnant women to depression disorders during late pregnancy
Summary
Depression is common during pregnancy, with up to 70% of women reporting symptoms of depression during pregnancy and 10–16% fulfilling the criteria for major depressive disorder [1]. Antenatal depression affects approximately 12% of women and is most prevalent in the second and third trimesters of pregnancy (7.4% in the first trimester; 12.8% in the second trimester; and 12.0% in the third trimester) [2]. Some studies have indicated that depression is most common in the third trimester of pregnancy [3, 4]. An Eye-Movement Study antenatal depression is the strongest predictor of postpartum depression (PPD) [9,10,11], and one-third of cases of PPD are reported to begin during pregnancy [12]. Antenatal depression has been identified as a significant clinical issue but is a neglected component of care for women in late pregnancy [13, 14]
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