Irrelevant emotional distractor faces and attentional capture by individuals with cognitive vulnerability to depression

Abstract

This study investigated attentional capture by individuals with cognitive vulnerability to depression (CVD), by using irrelevant emotional distractor faces. The hypothesis was that, during face-orientation decision tasks, both happy and sad task-irrelevant emotional faces are more attractive to individuals with CVD than to controls. To test this, both a group of subjects with CVD (n = 45) and a control group without such vulnerability (n = 51) were asked to search for a male face among two presented female faces based on the Chinese affective picture system. Although the attentional processing of emotionally facial expressions had a slower reaction time (RT) than that of neutral facial expressions, the presence of faces that express happiness did not trigger significantly different RTs between both groups. However, the presence of faces that express sadness resulted in longer RTs in individuals with CVD compared to controls. In summary, these results suggest that a focus on negative information and a difficulty to disengage from negative information may be characteristics of individuals with CVD. These characteristics could lead to a higher depression risk. The implications of these findings can be used for cognitive training of attentional bias with the aim to prevent the development of depression.