Suppression of Attentional Bias in Depression: A Preliminary Study

Abstract

Purpose: Past research indicated that attentional bias for negative information seemed to be suppressed in patients with anxiety while in an anxious state. A possible explanation was that a negative emotional state triggered a self-regulation goal, through which a coping strategy was activated and affected the allocation of attentional resources. This study investigated whether attentional bias for emotional faces could be suppressed in women with depression when a depressive mood was induced. Methods: Twenty-eight participants, including 14 women with depression and 14 age-and education-matched normal controls, were selected from a subject pool originally established for postpartum research. The diagnosis was based on an interview using the lifetime version of the Modified Schedule of Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia. After the procedure inducing a depressive mood, attentional bias was measured using the deployment-of-attention task (DOAT). Participants viewed an emotional face paired with a neutral face of the same individual, and were then required to identify on which one a color patch had first appeared. The percentage of choices favoring the happy, angry, or sad faces represented the selective attentional bias score for each emotion. At the very end of the experiment, the DOAT was again administered following a mood neutralization procedure. Results: Attentional bias for sad faces was smaller in the depressed group compared with the control group following the mood induction procedure. Specifically, when a depressive mood was elevated, the depressed group showed an opposite attentional bias for sad faces, which was significantly smaller than 0.5, but the control group did not show attentional biases for any emotional faces. After the procedure neutralizing a depressive mood, none of the attentional bias scores was significantly different between two groups. Conclusions: The results suggest that individuals with depression might use an emotion-focused coping strategy to deal with a depressive mood. A model that combines the evaluation and self-regulation of a negative mood was proposed to account for the results.