Depressive cognition: Self-reference and depth of processing
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
References (150)
- et al.
Explicit and implicit memory biases in depression and panic disorder
Behaviour Research and Therapy
(2001) - et al.
Attentional biases for negative information in induced and naturally occurring dysphoria
Behaviour Research and Therapy
(1997) - et al.
Implicit and explicit memory for emotional information in non-clinical subjects
Behaviour Research and Therapy
(1994) - et al.
Implicit and explicit memory for emotion-congruent information in clinical depression and anxiety
Behaviour Research and Therapy
(1995) - et al.
The validation of an inventory for measuring depressive thoughts: The Crandell Cognitions Inventory
Behaviour Research and Therapy
(1986) - et al.
Affective valence of words, explicit and implicit memory in clinical depression
Journal of Affective Disorders
(1995) - et al.
A naturalistic visual scanning approach to assess selective attention in major depressive disorder
Psychiatry Research
(2003) - et al.
The influence of mood on perceptions of social interactions
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
(1984) - et al.
Cognitive consequences of self-awareness
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
(1976) - et al.
Attentional biases in social anxiety and dysphoria: Does comorbidity make a difference?
Journal of Anxiety Disorders
(2006)
Depression and selective attention to self-esteem threatening words
Personality and Individual Differences
Depression and the ‘‘emotional’’ Stroop effect
Personality and Individual Differences
An analysis of memory dysfunction in major depression
Journal of Affective Disorders
Cueing of visual attention by emotional facial expressions: The influence of individual differences in anxiety and depression
Personality and Individual Differences
Depression and the interpretation of ambiguity
Behaviour Research and Therapy
Mood-congruent recall of affectively toned stimuli: A meta-analytic review
Clinical Psychology Review
Personality traits and the retrieval of positive and negative memories
Personality and Individual Differences
Hopelessness depression: A theory-based subtype of depression
Psychological Review
Learned helplessness in humans: Critique and reformulation
Journal of Abnormal Psychology
A rational look at the emotional Stroop phenomenon: A generic slowdown, not a Stroop effect
Journal of Experimental Psychology. General
Depression and pessimism for the future: Biased use of statistically relevant information in predictions for self versus others
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders
Attention and automaticity in the processing of self-relevant information
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Depression and implicit memory: Understanding mood congruent memory bias
Cognitive Therapy and Research
Depression: Clinical, experimental, and theoretical aspects
Cognitive therapy and the emotional disorders
Manual for the Beck Depression Inventory II (BDI-II)
The measurement of pessimism: The Hopelessness Scale
Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology
Development of an instrument to measure Beck's cognitive triad: The Cognitive Triad Inventory
Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology
The effect of depressed mood on the interpretation of ambiguity, with and without negative mood induction
Cognition and Emotion
Affect and memory: A review
Psychological Bulletin
Levels of object representation in anaclitic and introjective depression
Psychoanalytic Study Child
Memory bias in recovered clinical depressives
Cognition and Emotion
Attentional bias for threatening facial expressions in anxiety: Manipulation of stimulus duration
Cognition and Emotion
Covert and overt orienting of attention to emotional faces in anxiety
Cognition and Emotion
One's own face is hard to ignore
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology
Contribution of the depressive perspective to memory function in depression
American Journal of Psychiatry
Depression and the effects of positive and negative feedback on expectations, evaluations and performance
Cognitive Therapy and Research
Depression and cognitive style: Comparisons between measures
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Biases in visual orienting to negative and positive scenes in dysphoria: An eye-movement study
Journal of Abnormal Psychology
Distortion of perception and recall of neutral feedback in depression
Cognitive Therapy and Research
Human memory
Annual Review of Psychology
In search of the self: A positron emission tomography study
Psychological Science
Depth of processing and the retention of words in episodic memory
Journal of Experimental Psychology. General
Patterns of processing bias for emotional information across clinical disorders: A comparison of attention, memory, and prospective cognition in children and adolescents with depression, generalized anxiety, and posttraumatic stress disorder
Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology
Affective valence and the self-reference effect: Influence of retrieval conditions
British Journal of Psychology
Distortion of perception and recall of positive and neutral feedback in depression
Cognitive Therapy and Research
Affective valence and memory in depression: Dissociation of recall and fragment completion
Journal of Abnormal Psychology
Schematic processing and self-reference in clinical depression
Journal of Abnormal Psychology
The effects of self-correction on cognitive distortions in depression
Cognitive Therapy and Research
Cited by (146)
No modulation effects of depressive traits on the self-face advantage
2024, Personality and Individual DifferencesBelief updating and mood congruence in depressive disorder
2022, Encephale
- 1
I thank Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, Teresa Treat, Mark Hatzenbuehler, Francisco Farach, and Lori Hilt for their comments on earlier versions of this manuscript.