Depressive cognition: Self-reference and depth of processing

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Abstract

Cognitive models of depression, which propose that depression is associated with negatively biased thinking, have typically focused on either the content or the processes of depressive cognition. Content-based models suggest that depressive thought is more negative for self-relevant than for externally-focused content. Process-based models propose that early, automatic processes are not negatively biased in depression, but that deeper processes are biased. The current review evaluates evidence for both the self-relevant content and depth of processing accounts, and concludes that there is substantial evidence for both models. I call for further research which integrates content and process-based approaches by using self-relevant stimuli and cognitive measures which precisely identify the specific attention, memory, and interpretation processes affected in depression.

Section snippets

Self-reference and social cognition

People in general, whether depressed or nondepressed, process self-referential stimuli differently from more external stimuli. The self-relevance of information has been found to affect speed of attention, facility of memory, and neurobiological correlates of processing. Some of the earliest evidence of these effects came from dichotic listening paradigms, during which individuals are instructed to attend to one stream of speech while another irrelevant stream of speech is presented in their

Implications for depressive cognition

Self-referential information, therefore, is processed differently from non-self-referential information in both attention and memory tasks. In particular, evidence from the SRE memory task suggests that self-referential encoding encourages more elaborative processing. This basic research has important implications for the study of self-relevance in depressive cognition. For example, the SRE effect has been found to differ between depressed and nondepressed individuals. When the valence of the

Self-relevant content in depression

Negative self-views are one of the defining features of depression. The symptoms of Major Depressive Disorder include “feelings of worthlessness,” according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, 1994), and negative associations with the self are central to most theories of depression. Freud defined depression as “anger turned inward,” and psychodynamic theorists argue that depression is marked by excessive self-criticism (Blatt,

Elaborative processing in depression

The studies reviewed above offer strong evidence that depression is associated with more negative thinking for self-relevant than non-self-relevant information. However, this literature has tended to use self-report measures that cannot identify specific cognitive processes. Later theorists have suggested that some processes, but not others, are negatively biased in depression and have encouraged the use of performance-based measures that pinpoint specific cognitive processes. As described

Conclusions

Studies of memory, attention, and to a lesser extent, interpretation, suggest that information processing in depression is marked by biases in deeper levels of processing (see Table 1 for a summary). The levels of processing affected by depression include, but are not limited to, the strategic elaboration of stimuli in memory. Therefore, Williams and colleagues' predictions that depressive biases would not emerge on tasks of attention or implicit memory have not born out, but the evidence is

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    I thank Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, Teresa Treat, Mark Hatzenbuehler, Francisco Farach, and Lori Hilt for their comments on earlier versions of this manuscript.

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