Schematic Processing: A Comparison of Clinically Depressed, Dysphoric, and Nondepressed College Students

Reformulations of Beck’s theory (e.g., Dykman et al. J Pers Social Psychol 56:431–445, 1989) propose that depressed and nondepressed people are equally likely to use schematic processing to interpret information. The few studies to test this hypothesis have had methodological shortcomings. Past studies have not included a clinically depressed sample and have failed to assess a full range of potential biases (negative, neutral, and positive). To address these limitations, a recognition-of-information task was administered to clinically depressed, dysphoric, and nondepressed college students. Clinically depressed participants were significantly more likely than nondepressed participants to generate negative interpretations of a self-relevant ambiguous story. Clinically depressed participants also were more likely than both dysphoric and nondepressed participants to refute positive interpretations of the story. However, consistent with reformulations of Beck’s theory, dysphoric participants and nondepressed participants also tended to “go beyond” the information given in the story. Indeed, all three participant groups were equally biased in their interpretations. The difference among the groups was in the direction (negative vs. positive) and the heterogeneity of the biases.