Elsevier

Acta Psychologica

Volume 139, Issue 1, January 2012, Pages 137-145
Acta Psychologica

A load on my mind: Evidence that anhedonic depression is like multi-tasking

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2011.11.007Get rights and content

Abstract

Multi-tasking can increase susceptibility to distraction, affecting whether irrelevant objects capture attention. Similarly, people with depression often struggle to concentrate when performing cognitively demanding tasks. This parallel suggests that depression is like multi-tasking. To test this idea, we examined relations between self-reported levels of anhedonic depression (a dimension that reflects the unique aspects of depression not shared with anxiety or other forms of distress) and attention capture by salient items in a visual search task. Furthermore, we compared these relations to the effects of performing a concurrent auditory task on attention capture. Strikingly, both multi-tasking and elevated levels of anhedonic depression were associated with increased capture by uniquely colored items, but decreased capture by abruptly appearing items. At least with respect to attention capture and distraction, depression seems to be functionally comparable to juggling a second, unrelated cognitive task.

Highlights

► We examine relations between levels of anhedonic depression and attention capture. ► We compare these relations to the effects of multi-tasking on attention capture. ► Multi-tasking led to increased capture by color but decreased capture by onsets. ► Elevated levels of anhedonic depression were associated with this same pattern. ► Depression seems to be functionally comparable to juggling a secondary task.

Introduction

Difficulty concentrating is a hallmark feature of clinical depression (APA, 2000). Not surprisingly then, people with depression tend to perform poorly on selective attention tasks (e.g., Gotlib and McCann, 1984, Mialet et al., 1996, Ottowitz et al., 2002). One might therefore expect depressed individuals to be more easily distracted by salient stimuli that are otherwise irrelevant to the task at hand. An intriguingly similar pattern has emerged from studies of attention capture in non-depressed individuals, which have shown that multi-tasking1 can increase vulnerability to distraction by irrelevant items (e.g., Boot et al., 2005, Lavie and De Fockert, 2005). Together, these independent literatures suggest that experiencing elevated levels of depression may be comparable, in some respects, to working on one task while distracted by another. The main goal of the present research was to test this hypothesis.

Most clinical research examining the relation between depression and attention has focused on the processing of emotional stimuli. These studies have consistently shown that depressed individuals have difficulty disengaging their attention from negative emotional stimuli and/or pay less attention positive emotional stimuli (e.g., Gotlib and McCann, 1984, Koster et al., 2005, Shane and Peterson, 2007). However, people with depression also perform relatively worse on selective attention tasks that use non-emotional stimuli (e.g., Continuous Performance tasks, the color-word Stroop task; see Mialet et al., 1996, Ottowitz et al., 2002, for reviews). Furthermore, depression is associated with other cognitive deficits, ranging from difficulty remembering information to trouble solving problems (see Levin, Heller, Mohanty, Herrington, & Miller, 2007, for a review). The breadth of these deficits suggests that depression might involve a general depletion in cognitive resources (e.g., Hasher and Zacks, 1979, Mathews and MacLeod, 1994). However, the results of numerous studies suggest that people with depression have sufficient cognitive resources, but simply have difficulty initiating efficient cognitive strategies (e.g., Hertel and Gerstle, 2003, Marx et al., 1992; see Hertel, 1994 for a review) and/or appropriately allocating these resources (e.g., Levens et al., 2009, Yee and Miller, 1994; see Ellis & Ashbrook, 1989 for a review). As a result, depressed individuals are presumed to dedicate more cognitive resources to processing irrelevant aspects of the task they are performing (Ellis and Ashbrook, 1988, Jones et al., 2010), as well as to internal processes such as ruminative thoughts (Beevers, 2005, Ellis and Ashbrook, 1988, Hertel, 1998, Levens et al., 2009). In line with this view, depressed individuals often struggle to plan, make decisions, correct errors, and resist impulses (i.e., they show impaired “executive functioning”; see Austin et al., 2001, Fossati et al., 2002, Rogers et al., 2004, for reviews). Furthermore, people with depression have difficulty engaging in reflective, effortful processing (see Beevers, 2005, Hartlage et al., 1993), which likely requires executive resources. Finally, rumination and low levels of positive affect (both of which are associated with depression) have been linked with “mental inflexibility” (e.g., Ashby et al., 1999, Davis and Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000).

Though some existing theories point to problems with attentional control as a prominent factor driving cognitive deficits in depressed individuals (e.g., Hertel, 1994), the implications of these theories for understanding basic attention deficits associated with elevated levels of depression, and in particular attention capture by salient stimuli, remain unclear. In large part, this lack of clarity results from the fact that most studies on attention problems in depressed individuals have utilized relatively coarse measures of attentional processing, such as digit span tasks and Stroop tasks (see Rokke, Arnell, Koch, & Andrews, 2002 for a more detailed discussion of this issue). One way to address this issue is to employ cutting edge methods used by cognitive scientists who study attention.

Most studies on attention capture examine the sorts of features that draw attention by virtue of their salience (see Rauschenberger, 2003, Simons, 2000, Yantis, 1993, for reviews). Yet, the availability of processing resources can influence attention capture as well. People with reduced working memory capacity and people under cognitive load exhibit decreased attentional control, which in turn can lead to increased attention capture by salient but task-irrelevant stimuli (e.g., Conway and Kane, 2001, De Fockert and Bremner, 2011, De Fockert et al., 2001, Kane et al., 2001). These findings support the claim that working memory provides goal-directed control over selective attention (see Lavie & De Fockert, 2005). However, in some cases, a reduction in processing resources leads to the opposite effect — that is, decreased capture by task-irrelevant distracters (e.g., Brisson et al., 2009, Fougnie and Marois, 2007, Matsukura et al., 2011, SanMiguel et al., 2008). One possible explanation for this apparent inconsistency is that the impact of reduced resources on attention capture depends upon the nature of the stimuli which must be ignored; in other words, not all salient stimuli are the same. In line with this view, Boot et al. (2005) found that performing a concurrent auditory task leads to increased capture by uniquely colored items but decreased capture by items that appear abruptly in the display.

Although the reason for this differential effect of multi-tasking on capture by abrupt onsets and uniquely colored items is not clear (and a full discussion of the possibilities is beyond the scope of this paper, see Boot et al., 2005), one interpretation rests upon the distinction between transient and sustained events. An abrupt onset item is a transient event because after the item has appeared, it is no longer salient. In contrast, a uniquely colored item remains salient throughout. Under dual-task conditions, participants may be more likely to rely on distinctiveness to guide their search and to miss brief, transient events.

To the extent that multi-tasking taxes “executive resources” (see Logan and Gordon, 2001, Pashler, 1994), people suffering from executive functioning deficits should show a similar pattern of increased attention capture by uniquely colored items and decreased capture by abrupt onsets. Depression is associated with impaired executive functioning and sustained attention, but no previous studies have examined patterns of attention capture by salient but non-emotional stimuli in people with elevated levels of depression. To this end, the present research explored whether experiencing elevated levels of depression moderates attention capture in the same way that multi-tasking does2. Such findings would have important implications for our understanding of attention deficits associated with depression, and for theories and research on cognition and depression more generally. In Study 1, we attempted to replicate the differential effect of multi-tasking on attention capture by unique color items (Study 1A) and abrupt onsets (Study 1B) using a different type of visual search task than that used in the original research. We then investigated if and how levels of depression are associated with capture by unique color items (Study 2) and abrupt onsets (Study 3) using the same visual search task introduced in Study 1. In doing so, we focused on the construct of anhedonic depression, which reflects the unique aspects of depression not shared with other forms of distress (in particular, anxiety).

Section snippets

Studies 1A and 1B

The nature of the relation between multi-tasking and attention capture by transient and sustained salient distracters remains unclear. In the original research conducted by Boot et al. (2005), participants searched for a target letter in displays that also contained one item with a unique but irrelevant feature (onset or color). The unique feature was irrelevant because it was no more likely to be associated with the target than it was to be associated with any distracter item (Jonides &

Study 2

If depression is accompanied by cognitive deficits that are akin to multi-tasking, then elevated levels of anhedonic depression should be associated with: (a) increased capture by color singletons; and (b) reduced capture by abrupt onsets in the additional singleton task. In Study 2, we tested the first of these two predictions.

Depression is often conceptualized (and operationalized) in categorical terms; the most popular example is DSM-IV defined major depressive disorder (MDD). Although there

Study 3

To further test our proposal that depression is like multi-tasking, in Study 3 we explored whether elevated levels of anhedonic depression are associated with decreased attention capture by an abrupt onset item, just as a secondary task led to decreased capture by onsets in Study 1B.

General discussion

Although depression has been linked to attention deficits, the nature of these deficits has been underspecified. We drew upon methods used to study attention capture to examine if and how anhedonic depression is related to one's ability to ignore distracting visual information. Elevated levels of anhedonic depression were associated with increased capture by uniquely colored items but with decreased capture by abrupt onsets, a pattern similar to the impact of performing a concurrent auditory

Acknowledgments

Bredemeier wrote the initial draft of the manuscript and was responsible for the overall theoretical motivation for the manuscript. Brockmole, Boot, and Simons designed and conducted studies 1A and 1B several years before studies 2 and 3 (with support from NIH/NIMH Grant #R01 MH63773-03 and a fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation). Bredemeier and Berenbaum had primary responsibility for data collection and analysis of Studies 2 and 3, which were designed in collaboration with Simons

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