Cognitive Biases In Depression Research Articles

Everyday ostracism experiences of depressed individuals: Uncovering the role of attributions using experience sampling

BackgroundDepression is linked to more frequent experiences of ostracism (being excluded and ignored). Here, we examine attributions of everyday ostracism that may play an important role in individuals’ experience of and reactions to ostracism. Based on interpersonal and attribution theories of depression, we hypothesize that internal (compared to external) attributions of ostracism and attributions to being burdensome are particularly frequent among depressed individuals. MethodsWe use an experience sampling approach including retrospective reports of ostracism (N = 490) and event-contingent reports of ostracism (n = 323, k = 1107 experiences in 14 days) to analyze the frequency of everyday ostracism experiences, subsequent need threat, and attributions of ostracism by depressed individuals (i.e., individuals with stronger current depressive symptoms and those who had been diagnosed with depression before). ResultsDepressed individuals report more frequent retrospective ostracism, and more frequent everyday ostracism, as well as higher need threat following everyday ostracism. Depressed individuals do not attribute ostracism more internally, but they attribute being ostracized more frequently to being burdensome, as well as to hostile intent of the ostracizer(s). LimitationsThis research used a non-clinical sample and self-reports of current depressive symptoms and previous diagnoses of depression. Future research in patient populations and longitudinal designs will fruitfully complement the present findings. ConclusionsMaladaptive attributions of everyday ostracism may perpetuate the cycle between ostracism experiences and depression. This warrants attention from clinical practitioners, specifically in interventions against cognitive biases in depression.

Probability, cost, and interpretation biases’ relationships with depressive and anxious symptom severity: differential mediation by worry and repetitive negative thinking

ABSTRACT People high in depressive or anxious symptom severity show repetitive negative thinking, including worry and rumination. They also show various cognitive phenomena, including probability, cost, and interpretation biases. Since there is conceptual overlap between these cognitive biases and repetitive negative thinking – all involve thinking about potential threats and misfortunes – we wondered whether repetitive negative thinking could account for (mediate) these cognitive biases’ associations with depressive and anxious symptom severity. In three studies, conducted in two languages and cultures, cost bias and (in two studies) interpretation bias only predicted symptom severity via worry and repetitive negative thinking; this suggests these biases are actually associated with repetitive negative thinking, rather than with symptoms. In contrast, probability bias showed direct relationships with depressive (all studies) and anxious (two studies) symptom severity, suggesting its relationships with symptoms are partly independent of repetitive negative thinking. These results show the value of studying relationships among the various cognitive features of psychopathology. Furthermore, new interventions which target cognitive biases in depression or anxiety must show that they can improve upon cognitive behavioural therapy, which is already widely available, targets both repetitive negative thinking and probability bias, and is highly effective.

Neural correlations between cognitive deficits and emotion regulation strategies: understanding emotion dysregulation in depression from the perspective of cognitive control and cognitive biases.

The link between cognitive function and emotion regulation may be helpful in better understanding the onset, maintenance, and treatment for depression. However, it remains unclear whether there are neural correlates between emotion dysregulation and cognitive deficits in depression. To address this question, we first review the neural representations of emotion dysregulation and cognitive deficits in depression (including deficits in cognitive control and cognitive biases). Based on the comparisons of neural representations of emotion dysregulation versus cognitive deficits, we propose an accessible and reasonable link between emotion dysregulation, cognitive control, and cognitive biases in depression. Specifically, cognitive control serves the whole process of emotion regulation, whereas cognitive biases are engaged in emotion regulation processes at different stages. Moreover, the abnormal implementation of different emotion regulation strategies in depression is consistently affected by cognitive control, which is involved in the dorsolateral, the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, and the anterior cingulate cortex. Besides, the relationship between different emotion regulation strategies and cognitive biases in depression may be distinct: the orbitofrontal cortex contributes to the association between ineffective reappraisal and negative interpretation bias, while the subgenual prefrontal cortex and the posterior cingulate cortex underline the tendency of depressed individuals to ruminate and overly engage in self-referential bias. This review sheds light on the relationship between cognitive deficits and emotion dysregulation in depression and identifies directions in need of future attention.

Neuromolecular Underpinnings of Negative Cognitive Bias in Depression.

This selective review aims to summarize the recent advances in understanding the neuromolecular underpinnings of biased cognition in depressive disorder. We begin by considering the cognitive correlates of depressed mood and the key brain systems implicated in its development. We then review the core findings across two domains of biased cognitive function in depression: pessimistic judgment bias and abnormal response to negative feedback. In considering their underlying substrates, we focus on the neurochemical mechanisms identified by genetic, molecular and pharmacological challenge studies. We conclude by discussing experimental approaches to the treatment of depression, which are derived largely from an improved understanding of its cognitive substrates.

Judgmental perception of co-speech gestures in MDD

Cognitive bias in depression may increase sensitivity to judgmental appraisal of communicative cues. Nonverbal communication encompassing co-speech gestures is crucial for social functioning and is perceived differentially by men and women, however, little is known about the effect of depression on the perception of appraisal. We investigate if a cognitive bias influences the perception of appraisal and judgement of nonverbal communication in major depressive disorder (MDD).During watching videos of speakers retelling a story and gesticulating, 22 patients with MDD and 22 matched healthy controls pressed a button when they perceived the speaker as appraising in a positive or negative way. The speakers were presented in four different conditions (with and without speech and with natural speaker or as stick-figures) to evaluate context effects. Inter-subject covariance (ISC) of the button-press time series measured consistency across the groups of the response pattern depending on the factors diagnosis and gender.Significant effects emerged for the factors diagnosis (p = .002), gender (p = .007), and their interaction (p < .001). The female healthy controls perceived the gestures more consistently appraising than male controls, the female patients, and male patients whereas the latter three groups did not differ. Further, the ISC measure for consistency correlated negatively with depression severity. The natural speaker video without audio speech yielded the highest responses consistency. Indeed co-speech gestures may drive these ISC effects because number of gestures but not facial shrugs correlated with ISC amplitude.During co-speech gestures, a cognitive bias led to disturbed perception of appraisal in MDD for females. Social communication is critical for functional outcomes in mental disorders; thus perception of gestural communication is important in rehabilitation.

A Reasoned Action Approach to Depression Help-Seeking Messaging for College Students: Implications of Cognitive Biases in Depression

ABSTRACT In this study we integrated insights from research on cognitive biases in depression with the reasoned action approach to predicting and changing behavior (RAA) with the goal of identifying implications for help-seeking messaging for college students with varying levels of depression. Findings from a sample of 374 U.S. college students support the ability of RAA to explain help-seeking intentions for non-depressed, mildly depressed students, and moderate to severely depressed students. More severe depression was associated with less favorable attitudes, perceived norms, perceived capacity, and intention; changes in the relative strength of attitudes, perceived norms, and perceived capacity in explaining help-seeking intentions; stronger expectations of negative outcomes of help-seeking and weaker expectations of positive outcomes; and to some extent, stronger expectations of negative outcomes for oneself than for others. These findings underscore that depressed students construe help-seeking differently than non-depressed students, and that depressed and non-depressed students need different help-seeking messages.

Biases of Happy Faces in Face Classification Processing of Depression in Chinese Patients.

We explored the face classification processing mechanism in depressed patients, especially the biases of happy faces in face classification processing of depression. Thirty patients with the first episode of depression at the First Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University were selected as the depression group, while healthy people matched for age, gender, and educational level were assigned to the control group. The Hamilton Depression Scale and Hamilton Anxiety Scale were used to select the subjects; then, we used the forced face classification paradigm to collect behavioral (response time and accuracy) and event-related potential (ERP) data of the subjects. The differences between the groups were estimated using a repeated measurement analysis of variance. The total response time of classified faces in the depression group was longer than that in the control group, the correct rate was lower, and the difference was statistically significant (P < 0.05). N170 component analysis demonstrated that the latency of the depression group was prolonged, and the difference was statistically significant (P < 0.05). When classifying happy faces, the depressed patients demonstrated a decrease in N170 amplitude and a prolongation of latency in some brain regions compared with the healthy individuals. The cognitive bias in depression may be due to prolonged processing of positive facial information and difficulty in producing positive emotional responses.

Mapping Dynamic Interactions Among Cognitive Biases in Depression

Depression is theorized to be caused in part by biased cognitive processing of emotional information. Yet, prior research has adopted a reductionist approach that does not characterize how biases in cognitive processes such as attention and memory work together to confer risk for this complex multifactorial disorder. Grounded in affective and cognitive science, we highlight four mechanisms to understand how attention biases, working memory difficulties, and long-term memory biases interact and contribute to depression. We review evidence for each mechanism and highlight time- and context-dependent dynamics. We outline methodological considerations and recommendations for research in this area. We conclude with directions to advance the understanding of depression risk, cognitive training interventions, and transdiagnostic properties of cognitive biases and their interactions.

Association between negative cognitive bias and depression: A symptom-level approach.

Cognitive models of depression posit that negatively biased self-referent processing and attention have important roles in the disorder. However, depression is a heterogeneous collection of symptoms and all symptoms are unlikely to be associated with these negative cognitive biases. The current study involved 218 community adults whose depression ranged from no symptoms to clinical levels of depression. Random forest machine learning was used to identify the most important depression symptom predictors of each negative cognitive bias. Depression symptoms were measured with the Beck Depression Inventory-II. Model performance was evaluated using predictive R-squared (Rpred2), the expected variance explained in data not used to train the algorithm, estimated by 10 repetitions of 10-fold cross-validation. Using the self-referent encoding task (SRET), depression symptoms explained 34% to 45% of the variance in negative self-referent processing. The symptoms of sadness, self-dislike, pessimism, feelings of punishment, and indecision were most important. Notably, many depression symptoms made virtually no contribution to this prediction. In contrast, for attention bias for sad stimuli, measured with the dot-probe task using behavioral reaction time (RT) and eye gaze metrics, no reliable symptom predictors were identified. Findings indicate that a symptom-level approach may provide new insights into which symptoms, if any, are associated with negative cognitive biases in depression. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Feeling left out: depressed adolescents may atypically recruit emotional salience and regulation networks during social exclusion.

Depression is associated with negative attention and attribution biases and maladaptive emotion responsivity and regulation, which adversely impact self-evaluations and interpersonal relationships. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we investigated the neural substrates of these impairments. We compared neural activity recruited by 126 clinically depressed and healthy adolescents (ages 11–17 years) during social exclusion (Exclusion > Inclusion) using Cyberball. Results revealed significant interaction effects within left anterior insula (AI)/inferior frontal gyrus and left middle temporal gyrus. Insula hyperresponsivity was associated with peer exclusion for depressed adolescents but peer inclusion for healthy adolescents. In additional, healthy adolescents recruited greater lateral temporal activity during peer exclusion. Complementary effect size analyses within independent parcellations offered converging evidence, as well as highlighted medium-to-large effects within subgenual/ventral anterior cingulate cortex and lateral prefrontal, lateral temporal and lateral parietal regions implicated in emotion regulation. Depressogenic neural patterns were associated with negative self-perceptions and negative information processing biases. These findings suggest a neural mechanism underlying cognitive biases in depression, as reflected by emotional hyperresponsivity and maladaptive regulation/reappraisal of negative social evaluative information. This study lends further support for salience and central executive network dysfunction underlying social threat processing, and in particular, highlights the anterior insula as a key region of disturbance in adolescent depression.

Early perceptual anomaly of negative facial expression in depression: An event-related potential study

Depressed patients have a demonstrated cognitive bias in emotional information processing. However, it is unknown how early perceptual processing is modulated by emotional stimuli in depression. To examine this question, we studied 22 depressed patients and 22 healthy controls performing a cued target-response task with emotional facial expression as the cue. The early perceptual processes were examined using event-related potential (ERP) components, i.e., P1 and N170. Results showed that depressed patients had larger P1 amplitudes than healthy controls, implying that early perceptual abnormality for face processing in depression may occur as early as the P1 stage. There was no significant interaction between emotion types and groups on P1 amplitudes, which suggested that cognitive biases in depression might not yet have arisen. Following the P1 stage, N170 amplitudes for sad faces were larger than for other emotion types in depressed patients, whereas N170 amplitudes for happy faces were larger than for other emotion types in healthy controls. These results implied that depressed patients might have a perceptual bias associated with sad emotions, which may be detectable from the N170 time window. In summary, this study provides new insights for understanding the negative cognitive bias in depression using the electroneurophysiological biomarker N170.

Reduced sensitivity to neutral feedback versus negative feedback in subjects with mild depression: Evidence from event-related potentials study

Many previous event-related potential (ERP) studies have linked the feedback related negativity (FRN) component with medial frontal cortex processing and associated this component with depression. Few if any studies have investigated the processing of neutral feedback in mildly depressive subjects in the normal population. Two experiments compared brain responses to neutral feedback with behavioral performance in mildly depressed subjects who scored highly on the Beck Depression Inventory (high BDI) and a control group with lower BDI scores (low BDI). In the first study, the FRN component was recorded when neutral, negative or positive feedback was pseudo-randomly delivered to the two groups in a time estimation task. In the second study, real feedback was provided to the two groups in the same task in order to measure their actual accuracy of performance. The results of experiment one (Exp. 1) revealed that a larger FRN effect was elicited by neutral feedback than by negative feedback in the low BDI group, but no significant difference was found between neutral condition and negative condition in the High BDI group. The present findings demonstrated that depressive tendencies influence the processing of neutral feedback in medial frontal cortex. The FRN effect may work as a helpful index for investigating cognitive bias in depression in future studies.

Emotionally biased cognitive processes: the weakest link predicts prospective changes in depressive symptom severity.

Emotional biases in attention, interpretation, and memory are predictive of future depressive symptoms. It remains unknown, however, how these biased cognitive processes interact to predict depressive symptom levels in the long-term. In the present study, we tested the predictive value of two integrative approaches to model relations between multiple biased cognitive processes, namely the additive (i.e., cognitive processes have a cumulative effect) vs. the weakest link (i.e., the dominant pathogenic process is important) model. We also tested whether these integrative models interacted with perceived stress to predict prospective changes in depressive symptom severity. At Time 1, participants completed measures of depressive symptom severity and emotional biases in attention, interpretation, and memory. At Time 2, one year later, participants were reassessed to determine depressive symptom levels and perceived stress. Results revealed that the weakest link model had incremental validity over the additive model in predicting prospective changes in depressive symptoms, though both models explained a significant proportion of variance in the change in depressive symptoms from Time 1 to Time 2. None of the integrative models interacted with perceived stress to predict changes in depressive symptomatology. These findings suggest that the best cognitive marker of the evolution in depressive symptoms is the cognitive process that is dominantly biased toward negative material, which operates independent from experienced stress. This highlights the importance of considering idiographic cognitive profiles with multiple cognitive processes for understanding and modifying effects of cognitive biases in depression.

Sitting Posture Makes a Difference—Embodiment Effects on Depressive Memory Bias

Basic research has shown that the motoric system (i.e., motor actions or stable postures) can strongly affect emotional processes. The present study sought to investigate the effects of sitting posture on the tendency of depressed individuals to recall a higher proportion of negative self-referent material. Thirty currently depressed inpatients either sat in a slumped (depressed) or in an upright (non-depressed) posture while imagining a visual scene of themselves in connection with positive or depression related words presented to them on a computer screen. An incidental recall test of these words was conducted after a distraction task. Results of a mixed ANOVA showed a significant posture x word type interaction, with upright-sitting patients showing unbiased recall of positive and negative words but slumped patients showing recall biased towards more negative words. The findings indicate that relatively minor changes in the motoric system can affect one of the best-documented cognitive biases in depression. Practical implications of the findings are discussed.

Major depression duration reduces appetitive word use: An elaborated verbal recall of emotional photographs

IntroductionMajor depressive disorder (MDD) is characterized by cognitive biases in attention, memory and language use. Language use biases often parallel depression symptoms, and contain over-representations of both negative emotive and death words as well as low levels of positive emotive words. This study further explores cognitive biases in depression by comparing the effect of current depression status to cumulative depression history on an elaborated verbal recall of emotional photographs. MethodsFollowing a negative mood induction, fifty-two individuals (42 women) with partially-remitted depression viewed – then recalled and verbally described – slides from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS). Descriptions were transcribed and frequency of depression-related word use (positive emotion, negative emotion, sex, ingestion and death) was analyzed using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count program (LIWC). ResultsContrary to expectations and previous findings, current depression status did not affect word use in any categories of interest. However, individuals with more than 5 years of previous depression used fewer words related to positive emotion (t(50) = 2.10, p = .04, (d = 0.57)), and sex (t(48) = 2.50, p = .013 (d = 0.81)), and there was also a trend for these individuals to use fewer ingestion words (t(50) = 1.95, p = .057 (d = 0.58)), suggesting a deficit in appetitive processing. ConclusionsOur findings suggest that depression duration affects appetitive information processing and that appetitive word use may be a behavioral marker for duration related brain changes which may be used to inform treatment.

Associations between Depressive Symptoms, Rumination, Overgeneral Autobiographical Memory and Interpretation Bias within a Clinically Depressed Sample

There is ample research demonstrating that biases in cognitive processes, such as a negative interpretation bias, rumination, and overgeneral autobiographical memory, are potential vulnerability factors for depression. However, a key limitation is that most studies conducted so far have studied cognitive biases in depression in isolation. Therefore our goal was to explore whether or not interpretation bias, overgeneral autobiographical memory, and rumination are present and interrelated in depressive outpatients. In this explorative study we examined the relationship between negative interpretation bias, rumination, overgeneral autobiographical memory, and severity of depression in clinically depressed outpatients. According to our expectations a negative interpretation bias and rumination were associated with severity of depression. Moreover, overgeneral autobiographical memory was not associated with severity of depression, but seemed to be associated with diagnosis of depression. A negative interpretation bias, overgeneral autobiographical memory, and rumination were not significantly related with each other in this study. This finding suggests they are not strongly related and might be largely distinct vulnerability factors for depression. The study presents an important yet preliminary finding which warrants further replication with a larger sample size.

Affective priming in major depressive disorder

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.

Neural mechanisms of the cognitive model of depression

In the 40 years since Aaron Beck first proposed his cognitive model of depression, the elements of this model--biased attention, biased processing, biased thoughts and rumination, biased memory, and dysfunctional attitudes and schemas--have been consistently linked with the onset and maintenance of depression. Although numerous studies have examined the neural mechanisms that underlie the cognitive aspects of depression, their findings have not been integrated with Beck's cognitive model. In this Review, we identify the functional and structural neurobiological architecture of Beck's cognitive model of depression. Although the mechanisms underlying each element of the model differ, in general the negative cognitive biases in depression are facilitated by increased influence from subcortical emotion processing regions combined with attenuated top-down cognitive control.

Cognitive Biases in Depression and Eating Disorders

This study examined the link between cognitive biases (i.e., attention biases and implicit associations) and symptoms of depression and eating disorders and whether the content of these biases is disorder-specific. These hypotheses were examined with a sample of 202 undergraduate women. Cognitive biases were measured via computer-based tasks (i.e., the probe detection task and the Implicit Association Test) and symptom levels were measured via interview and self-report. Partially supporting the main hypothesis, symptoms of depression and eating disorders were significantly correlated with disorder-specific implicit associations but not attentional biases. Partially supporting the specificity hypothesis, there was evidence for stronger associations between symptoms of eating disorders and eating specific implicit associations.

Neurophysiology of Motivated Learning: Adaptive Mechanisms Underlying Cognitive Bias in Depression

Cognitive Behavior Therapy for depression focuses on changing cognitive appraisals of the self and life events. This approach contrasts with behaviorist approaches to clinical disorders, which focused on elementary learning explanations and assumed that cognitive mediation is irrelevant. A better integration of behavioral analysis with cognitive therapy could be facilitated by the theoretical advances in animal learning theory over the last several decades. Animals have been found to respond to events in relation to mental representations of the reward value of those events. The evidence now shows that learning in mammals cannot be explained by passive behaviorist association principles, but requires a theoretical understanding of the animal’s hedonic expectancies and its adaptive response to discrepancies from those expectancies. The mechanisms of cognitive representation and information handling that are implied by modern learning theory have presented clear and specific challenges to neurophysiological theories of motivational control of learning and memory. The mechanisms of human motivational control appear to be similar to those of other mammals, suggesting that progress with understanding neurophysiological mechanisms of hedonic evaluation, frustration, and action regulation will soon provide the opportunity for a comprehensive neuropsychological model to guide diagnosis and treatment of depressive disorders.