Differences of biased recall memory for emotional information among children and adolescents of mothers with MDD, children and adolescents with MDD, and normal controls

Highlights

• Children of mothers with MDD recall more sad words.

• Children with MDD recalled more sadness stimuli.

• Children of mothers with MDD recall less happy words.

• Recall of neutral stimuli is not different among groups.

• Healthy children recall happy words more than children with MDD.

Abstract

This study examines explicit memory bias for emotional information in children and adolescents with major depressive disorder (MDD). Participants were a convenient sample of 28 children and adolescents of mothers with MDD, 28 children and adolescents with MDD, and 29 healthy controls. Their age range was 11–17 years old. The groups were matched for gender ratio, mean age, and the years of educational level. They were assessed by the Recall Task. Emotional stimuli consisted of three sets of words namely sad, happy, and neutral words. Children and adolescents of mothers with MDD similar to children and adolescents with MDD recalled more sadness stimuli in comparison with the controls. In other words, they showed an explicit memory bias towards sad stimuli. Also, healthy children significantly recalled more happy words than the other two groups. There was no significant difference among the three groups for the recall of neutral stimuli. Current findings support that there is a recall memory bias for emotional information in children with MDD. These children more than healthy children recall sad words. Moreover, healthy children recall happy words more than children with MDD.

Introduction

There is an association between depression and the preferential processing for negative valence of emotional information (Gollan et al., 2008, Leppänen et al., 2004). Moreover, abnormal emotional processing persists in the non-depressive children and adolescents of parents with depression (Joormann et al., 2007, Moradi et al., 2000). In addition, cognitive bias is a risk factor for the subsequent development of depression in predisposed individuals (Raes et al., 2006, van Oostrom et al., 2013). Furthermore, there is a bias towards negative emotions in depression (Maalouf et al., 2012).

The content-specificity hypothesis states that stimuli, whose affective valence matches the person׳s emotional state, will be remembered better (Beck et al., 1987, Beck and Perkins, 2001). Also, Williams et al. (1988) proposed that depression is associated with a cognitive bias favoring sadness. According to these models, depression is associated with a cognitive bias (explicit memory bias) towards sad information.

Moreover, there is an “emotional contagion” between family members (9, Rapson et al., 1993). It is postulated that the family members synergistically trigger each other leading to arousal, re-experience, and avoidance symptoms in vicious cycles.

Depressed individuals in comparison to never depressed controls are impaired in selecting task-relevant positive stimuli (Levens and Gotlib, 2009). Formerly depressed individuals more than never-depressed individuals recall negative self-referent information (Romero et al., 2014). In addition, intrusive memory of negative past memories is common in depression (Williams and Moulds, 2007). Dysphoria is associated with less retrieval of positive memories in children (O’Carroll et al., 2006). Moreover, there is a debate about decreased autobiographical memory and poor outcome of depression (Raes et al., 2006).

There is a higher vulnerability to depression in relatives of patients with major depressive disorder. Negative cognitive bias is stronger in these relatives (Watters et al., 2013). Never-depressed females with a positive family history of depression selectively attend to negative information and not to neural information (van Oostrom et al., 2013).In addition, this cognitive bias is a trait and contributes to develop depression (van Oostrom et al., 2013). Van Oostrom et al. use the term “negative affective processing bias” to explain dysfunctional inhibition of negative information. They proposed that negative affective processing bias is an endophenotype of depression, i.e., a heritable trait marker for the risk of developing depression (van Oostrom et al., 2013).

Several research studies have been conducted on the cognitive characteristics of adults with depression. But few studies investigated this matter in children and adolescents (Baert et al., 2010, Beeney and Arnett, 2008, Conklin et al., 2009). Most of the researches have used experimental approaches to investigate cognitive bias in emotional disorders in adults but not in children and adolescents (Gollan et al., 2008, Leppänen et al., 2004). Evidence have shown that depressed children and adolescents display the same symptoms of cognitive biases as those observed in depressed adults (Jacobs et al., 2008, Moradi et al., 2000).

The study investigates some selected aspects of cognitive processing (explicit memory bias) in children and adolescents who had a parent (mother) with major depressive disorder (MDD) but these children were without positive personal histories of major depressive disorder themselves. One of the groups was children and adolescents with MDD. It is hypothesized that children and adolescents with MDD and children and adolescents of mothers with MDD are cognitively biased toward recalling negative emotional stimuli as compared with the healthy control group. It is also examined whether the healthy control children and adolescents recall the happy words (positive stimuli) more than the other two groups. In order to avoid emotional contagious effect, we screen out participants whose siblings and fathers have major depressive disorder. Furthermore, we compared the two groups of children and adolescents with MDD and children and adolescents of mothers with MDD.