Eye Gaze Tracking Reveals Different Effects of a Sad Mood Induction on the Attention of Previously Depressed and Never Depressed Women

Abstract

This study examined the effect of a sad mood induction (MI) on attention to emotional information and whether the effect varies as a function of depression vulnerability. Previously depressed (N = 42) and never depressed women (N = 58) were randomly assigned to a sad or a neutral MI and then viewed sets of depression-related, anxiety-related, positive, and neutral images. Attention was measured by tracking eye fixations to the images throughout an 8-s presentation. The sad MI had a substantial impact on the attention of never depressed participants: never depressed participants who experienced the sad MI increased their attention to positive images and decreased their attention to anxiety-related images relative to those who experienced the neutral MI. In contrast, previously depressed participants who experienced the sad MI did not attend to emotional images any differently than previously depressed participants who experienced the neutral MI. These results suggest that for never depressed individuals, a sad MI activates an emotion regulation strategy that changes the way that emotional information is attended to in order to counteract the sad mood; the absence of a difference for previously depressed individuals likely reflects a maladaptive emotion regulation response associated with depression vulnerability. Implications for cognitive theories of depression and depression-vulnerability are discussed.