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Negative biases and risk for depression; Integrating self-report and emotion task markers
Abstract
Negativity biases and their impact on reactivity to negative emotion are implicated in the mechanisms of risk for depression. The aim of this study was to determine whether self-reported negativity bias is related to objective cognitive measures of emotional reactivity.
A previously established Web self-report measure of negativity bias was used to assess 1,080 volunteers from the Brain Resource International Database (overseen by the nonprofit BRAINnet Foundation). We identified matched subgroups of "High Risk" (n = 216) and "Low Risk" (n = 216) participants using a psychometric high-risk method, which classified High Risk as the sample's top 30% of negativity bias scores and Low Risk as the bottom 30%. These subsamples also completed the WebNeuro cognitive tasks for assessing both conscious and nonconscious reactions to facial emotions. Task performance was quantified by accuracy, reaction time, and misidentification errors.
The High Risk (high negativity bias) subgroup was distinguished by greater reactivity to negative emotion in both conscious and nonconscious processing. The High Risk profile was reflected in higher accuracy for sadness (nonconsciously) and disgust (consciously), and more frequent misidentification of neutral as anger (consciously).
These results are consistent with seminal theories that a systematic cognitive negativity bias produces a hyper-reactivity to negative emotion, which can impact nonconscious as well as conscious processing. The results provide a step toward objective markers of risk for depression that would help the community act regarding preventative programs. Replication in patient samples is warranted.
... Relatives and non-relative participants were recruited from the community using posters at cafes, libraries and study campuses and online through volunteer websites (Watters and Williams, 2011). ...
... Planned contrasts compared each negative emotion (sad, fear, anger, disgust) with happy in order to maximize the difference in emotional valence. Studies using fearful and sad facial expressions to probe emotion reactivity in depression and risk have also contrasted them to happy (Chan et al., 2009;Monk et al., 2008;Phillips et al., 1997;Victor et al., 2010) because of the bias in these populations towards perceiving neutral as more sad or negative and less happy (Csukly et al., 2008;Gollan et al., 2008;Watters and Williams, 2011) (for a review see (Watters and Williams, 2011)). For temporal and parietal sites, we included the additional within-subjects factor of laterality. ...
... Planned contrasts compared each negative emotion (sad, fear, anger, disgust) with happy in order to maximize the difference in emotional valence. Studies using fearful and sad facial expressions to probe emotion reactivity in depression and risk have also contrasted them to happy (Chan et al., 2009;Monk et al., 2008;Phillips et al., 1997;Victor et al., 2010) because of the bias in these populations towards perceiving neutral as more sad or negative and less happy (Csukly et al., 2008;Gollan et al., 2008;Watters and Williams, 2011) (for a review see (Watters and Williams, 2011)). For temporal and parietal sites, we included the additional within-subjects factor of laterality. ...
Facial expressions signaling threat and mood-congruent loss have been used to probe abnormal neural reactivity in major depressive disorder (MDD) and may be implicated in genetic vulnerability to MDD. This study investigated electro-cortical reactivity to facial expressions 101 unaffected, adult first degree relatives of probands with MDD and non-relative controls (n = 101). We investigated event-related potentials (ERPs) to five facial expressions of basic emotion: fear, anger, disgust, sadness and happiness under both subliminal (masked) and conscious (unmasked) presentation conditions, and the source localization of group differences. In the conscious condition, controls showed a distinctly positive-going shift in responsive to negative versus happy faces, reflected in a greater positivity for the VPP frontally and the P300 parietally, and less negativity for the N200. By contrast, relatives showed less differentiation of emotions, reflected in less VPP and P300 positivity, particularly for anger and disgust, and which produced an enhanced N200 for sadness. These group differences were consistently source localized to the anterior cingulate cortex. The findings contribute new evidence for neural disruptions underlying the differentiation of salient emotions in familial risk for depression. These disruptions occur in the appraisal (∼200 ms post-stimulus) through to the context evaluation (∼300 ms+ post-stimulus) phases of of emotion processing, consistent with theories that risk for depression involves biased or attenuated processing of emotion.
... Consistent with the possibility that this signature of risk is trait-like rather than statelike, first-degree relatives in this study were characterized by symptoms within the normal range of severity and free of current or lifetime MDD. The slower reaction time of relatives for identifying sadness and fear is in accord with findings for overt depressive disorder [for a review, see (Watters and Williams, 2011)]. Slowed identification of negative emotions in depression has been interpreted as an indicator of abnormally prolonged engagement in negative emotional cues, consistent with a negative bias or an inability to effectively cognitively appraise these stimuli (Gollan et al., 2008;Yoon et al., 2009). ...
... Slowed identification of negative emotions in depression has been interpreted as an indicator of abnormally prolonged engagement in negative emotional cues, consistent with a negative bias or an inability to effectively cognitively appraise these stimuli (Gollan et al., 2008;Yoon et al., 2009). Poorer accuracy for emotion identification has also been found to characterize major depression [for review; (Watters and Williams, 2011)]. Thus, our observation that relatives had problems with accurate of identification of anger is a further indication of irregular emotion processing. ...
... It is possible that valence-related differences are more subtle in relatives than in clinical samples, and are thus revealed when a more intense bi-polar contrast of negative versus positive (rather than negative versus neutral) is used. In other research, happy has been preferred as a baseline because neutral faces are not necessarily free from emotional interpretation and are perceived more negatively in patients with MDD and those at risk for MDD (Gur et al., 1992;Watters and Williams, 2011). We also note that studies of MDD have revealed similar alterations in amygdala activations using baselines of happy and neutral faces, baseline fixation and resting state (Monk et al., 2008;Victor et al., 2012). ...
Background:
Major depressive disorder (MDD) is characterized by maladaptions in affective brain circuitry and in emotion regulation. It remains unknown whether these maladaptions characterize first-degree relatives of probands who are unaffected yet have a higher risk of developing MDD.
Methods:
Participants were 72 unaffected first-degree relatives of probands with MDD and 66 matched non-relative controls. We investigated brain circuit function and self-reported emotion regulation strategies for reappraisal and suppression. During functional magnetic resonance imaging, we probed circuitry relevant to both negative and positive valence systems using facial expressions signaling potential threat, sadness and happiness, presented under both conscious and subliminal viewing conditions. We compared groups using a statistically controlled region of interest (ROI) approach including the amygdala, insula, anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), ventromedial prefrontal cortex and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. We also used a data-driven cluster analytic approach for characterizing the relatives by their brain function profiles.
Results:
As a group, relatives were distinguished by hyper-reactivity of the pregenual ACC during subliminal viewing of threat-related expressions but hypo-activation of the amygdala, insula and dorsal ACC during explicit viewing of the same threat-related expressions and sadness. When considered individually, this brain function profile characterized two-thirds of relatives, and these relatives were also less likely to use reappraisal to regulate negative emotion.
Limitations:
The design was cross-sectional and therefore does not provide direct evidence as to the trait- (versus state-) like profile observed in relatives.
Conclusions:
Familial risk for MDD may involve a disruption to the normal recruitment of neural circuits for appraising salient emotions, both implicit and explicit. Interventions targeting reappraisal strategies for regulating negative emotion may serve to buffer this risk.
... In a related but different literature, persistent negative emotional states associated with low mood, depression, or anxiety, have frequently been shown to yield a negative interpretation bias. These traits tend to favor negative over positive interpretations [20][21][22] of ambiguous positive-negative faces [23][24][25][26] or ambiguous semantic information [27]. A negative interpretation bias is a type of cognitive bias where there is a tendency to interpret ambiguous stimuli in a negative manner when others would favor positive interpretations [20,21]. ...
... Influence of these variables on interpretation bias was examined using ANOVA and 1-tailed Spearman correlations were used in figures for illustrative purpose. In accordance with the literature on depression and anxiety [20][21][22], we expected that negative mood, depression and anxiety would be positively correlated with negative interpretation bias for facial expressions. ...
... In addition, we found that more persistent negative states related to individual traits, such as negative mood, anxiety, and depression, predicted the magnitude of the negative interpretation bias when judging ambiguous expressions, but did not influence the impact of the transient emotions induced by movies. This confirms that persistent negative affect leads to a tendency to over-interpret ambiguous information as negative [20][21][22]. The findings reported here therefore support the idea that transient and persistent emotional states 'infuse' cognitive states and influence evaluation in a state-congruent fashion [13]. ...
Both affective states and personality traits shape how we perceive the social world and interpret emotions. The literature on affective priming has mostly focused on brief influences of emotional stimuli and emotional states on perceptual and cognitive processes. Yet this approach does not fully capture more dynamic processes at the root of emotional states, with such states lingering beyond the duration of the inducing external stimuli. Our goal was to put in perspective three different types of affective states (induced affective states, more sustained mood states and affective traits such as depression and anxiety) and investigate how they may interact and influence emotion perception. Here, we hypothesized that absorption into positive and negative emotional episodes generate sustained affective states that outlast the episode period and bias the interpretation of facial expressions in a perceptual decision-making task. We also investigated how such effects are influenced by more sustained mood states and by individual affect traits (depression and anxiety) and whether they interact. Transient emotional states were induced using movie-clips, after which participants performed a forced-choice emotion classification task with morphed facial expressions ranging from fear to happiness. Using a psychometric approach, we show that negative (vs. neutral) clips increased participants’ propensity to classify ambiguous faces as fearful during several minutes. In contrast, positive movies biased classification toward happiness only for those clips perceived as most absorbing. Negative mood, anxiety and depression had a stronger effect than transient states and increased the propensity to classify ambiguous faces as fearful. These results provide the first evidence that absorption and different temporal dimensions of emotions have a significant effect on how we perceive facial expressions.
... Negativity Bias is a measure of cognitive bias toward negative appraisal of oneself and situations. It is a stable measure of risk for depression, relating to genetic and brain markers (Williams et al., 2012; Watters and Williams, 2011). This group difference in Negativity Bias confirms that URs are at greater risk for depression than are controls. ...
... Regarding our second hypothesis, our findings indicate that compared to controls, URs had a slower response time to correctly identify sad and fearful facial expressions. As previously reported in depression, slowed response time for identification of facial expressions , in addition to accuracy and bias behavioral performance measures, is mostly found for sad (Gollan et al., 2008; Watters and Williams, 2011) and less commonly for fear (Pine et al., 2004). Brain measures confirm unique patterns of activation for both fearful (Sheline et al., 2001) and sad facial expressions in depression (Surguladze et al., 2005). ...
... With respect to our third hypothesis, our findings did not provide evidence in support of emotion bias relating to overt symptoms. Symptom indicators of risk have previously been found to predict outcomes in emotion identification (Chan et al., 2007; Csukly et al., 2008; Watters and Williams, 2011). However, in the current study, participants were not selected as being at risk according to symptom scales and were mostly clustered in the ultra-healthy range. ...
... Similarly, with anxiety disorders, this biased pattern denotes the interpretation of ambiguous stimuli and situations as either threatening or feared, causing hyperreactivity (Carlisi & Robinson, 2018;Williams et al., 2009). Indeed, these attributional biases are such prominent features of PTSD that they are embedded in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder (5th ed.; DSM-5; APA, 2013) diagnostic criteria for the disorder, particularly Criterion D (i.e., negative alterations in cognitions and mood) and Criterion E (i.e., alterations in arousal and reactivity; Watters & Williams, 2011). Individuals with PTSD often exhibit biases toward negative emotional or traumarelated information (Kimble et al., 2018). ...
... Maladaptive negativity bias appears to be a consistent transdiagnostic marker of symptoms of psychopathology, evidenced in subclinical and clinical levels of depression and anxiety (Gollan et al., 2016;Nusslock & Alloy, 2017;Shook et al., 2007;Watters & Williams, 2011;Williams et al., 2009). Research also suggests that negativity bias maps onto a genetic vulnerability for psychopathology (Williams et al., 2009). ...
Individuals who have experienced more trauma throughout their life have a heightened risk of developing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following injury. Although trauma history cannot be retroactively modified, identifying the mechanism(s) by which preinjury life events influence future PTSD symptoms may help clinicians mitigate the detrimental effects of past adversity. The current study proposed attributional negativity bias, the tendency to perceive stimuli/events as negative, as a potential intermediary in PTSD development. We hypothesized an association between trauma history and PTSD symptom severity following a new index trauma via heightened negativity bias and acute stress disorder (ASD) symptoms. Recent trauma survivors (N =189, 55.5% women, 58.7% African American/Black) completed assessments of ASD, negativity bias, and lifetime trauma 2-weeks postinjury; PTSD symptoms were assessed 6 months later. A parallel mediation model was tested with bootstrapping (10,000 resamples). Both negativity bias, Path b1 : β = -.24, t(187) = -2.88, p = .004, and ASD symptoms, Path b2 : β = .30, t(187) = 3.71, p < .001, fully mediated the association between trauma history and 6-month PTSD symptoms, full model: F(6, 182) = 10.95, p < .001, R 2 = .27; Path c': β = .04, t(187) = 0.54, p = .587. These results suggest that negativity bias may reflect an individual cognitive difference that can be further activated by acute trauma. Moreover, negativity bias may be an important, modifiable treatment target, and interventions addressing both acute symptoms and negativity bias in the early posttrauma period may weaken the link between trauma history and new-onset PTSD.
... The negativity bias self-report measure includes the criteria that surround endophenotypic risk markers of depression (Watters and Williams 2011). Negativity bias is accurate in identifying individuals suffering from major depression and furthermore accurately identifies major depression from various other mental health illnesses. ...
... Negativity bias begins as a genetic predisposition and eventually interacts with stress in one's life, which then leads to an individual automatically appraising a situation(s) negatively. Finally, this negativity manifests as behavioral symptoms of major depression (Watters and Williams 2011). ...
Mood disorders are a group of diagnoses in which there is a disturbance in an individual’s mood and include major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder. Individuals who serve in the military may be prone to depression and other mood disorders, at least partially as a result of exposure to combat, separation from family during deployment or training, and other traumatic factors. Veterans are more likely to develop a mood disorder than their civilian counterparts, despite having several protective factors associated with military service. Special considerations are warranted for subpopulations of veterans, such as veteran women and older adult veterans. This chapter highlights the prevalence of mood disorders in veterans, common symptoms and specific diagnostic criteria related to each disorder, history of mood disorders within military and veteran cultures and care systems, etiologies of mood disorders, treatment options found within military and Veterans Administration health-care systems, and cutting-edge advancements in mood disorders research.
... Considering language, the practical influence of depressive mood on linguistic style is mainly explained with respect to cognitive mechanisms (Beck, 1976(Beck, , 1986. Self-focus and increased negative thinking are considered characteristics of depression (Jarrold et al., 2011;Romero, Sanchez, & Vazquez, 2014;Watters & Williams, 2011). The, mechanisms involved in cognitive functioning moderate language, in the same time. ...
... The results of our study confirm the absence of positive thinking (Ingram & Wisnicki, 1988) (Ingram et al., 1990) and the presence of negative biased thinking (Rude, Wenzlaff, Gibbs, Vane, & Whitney, 2002;Rude, Valdez, Odom, & Ebrahimi, 2003;Watters & Williams, 2011;Romero et al., 2014). Patients with depression provided pleasurable content with difficulty, as other researchers also indicated (Rude, Gortner, & Pennebaker, 2004). ...
Depression is a significant disorder, with more than 300 million people having this diagnosis. Mood, cognition and language are altered during depressive episodes. Language could act as a diagnostic and a therapeutic tool in psychotherapy. While the theoretical body of literature is increasing, studies on language indicators in depression are still challenging. This study aims to limit this gap, by bringing valid data on linguistic indicators used in the narrative language of persons with depression, and by testing the relation between these indicators and cognitive dysfunction in major depressive disorder. The study used a content analysis approach to rate the collected language sample. Results confirm the existence of linguistic indicators for depressive patients: use of the singular form pronoun, mainly 1st person pronouns use, tendency of self-focus, extensive past tense use for verb actions, inverted word order for topic, use of emphasis, presence of short, impersonal, truncated and arid sentences, presence of ellipsis, tautologies, repetition and lack of comparison. The changes in morphologic-syntactic-lexical language dimensions are associated with deficits in working memory, set shifting, strategic planning, attention and psychomotor speed, as assessed through the Cogtest neuropsychological measurements.
... This states that it is a universal and innate human ability to recognize the facial expressions corresponding to the six emotions called basic or primary (happiness, surprise, disgust, sadness, fear, and anger). The effectiveness of people with depression in decoding emotional expressions through photos was investigated with several methodologies, including the morphing task (Bediou et al., 2005;Joormann and Gotlib, 2006;Gilboa-Schechtman et al., 2008;LeMoult et al., 2009;Schaefer et al., 2010;Aldinger et al., 2013), the emotion recognition task (Kan et al., 2004;Leppänen et al., 2004;Gollan et al., 2008Gollan et al., , 2010Uekermann et al., 2008;Wright et al., 2009;Douglas and Porter, 2010;Milders et al., 2010;Naranjo et al., 2011;Punkanen et al., 2011;Péron et al., 2011;Watters and Williams, 2011;Schneider et al., 2012;Schlipf et al., 2013;Chen et al., 2014), the emotion attentional task (Gotlib et al., 2004;Joormann and Gotlib, 2007;Leyman et al., 2007;Kellough et al., 2008;Sanchez et al., 2013;Duque and Vázquez, 2014), the matching task (Milders et al., 2010;Liu et al., 2012;Chen et al., 2014), and the dot-probe detection task (Fritzsche et al., 2010). ...
... On this evidence, many studies prove that depressed patients show a labeling (recognition) bias toward negative emotions. More specifically, such investigations reported contradictory results, showing that MDDs can be either faster and/or more accurate (Mandal and Bhattacharya, 1985;Gilboa-Schechtman et al., 2002;Surguladze et al., 2004;Csukly et al., 2010;Milders et al., 2010;Liu et al., 2012) or slower and/or less accurate (Zuroff and Colussy, 1986;Cooley and Nowicki, 1989;Cerroni et al., 2007;Gollan et al., 2008;Csukly et al., 2009;Douglas and Porter, 2010;Anderson et al., 2011;Watters and Williams, 2011;Aldinger et al., 2013) than HC subjects in decoding fear, anger, and, in particular, sadness. ...
Most studies investigating the processing of emotions in depressed patients reported impairments in the decoding of negative emotions. However, these studies adopted static stimuli (mostly stereotypical facial expressions corresponding to basic emotions) which do not reflect the way people experience emotions in everyday life. For this reason, this work proposes to investigate the decoding of emotional expressions in patients affected by recurrent major depressive disorder (RMDD) using dynamic audio/video stimuli. RMDDs’ performance is compared with the performance of patients with adjustment disorder with depressed mood (ADs) and healthy (HCs) subjects. The experiments involve 27 RMDDs (16 with acute depression – RMDD-A and 11 in a compensation phase – RMDD-C), 16 Ads, and 16 HCs. The ability to decode emotional expressions is assessed through an emotion recognition task based on short audio (without video), video (without audio), and audio/video clips. The results show that AD patients are significantly less accurate than HCs in decoding fear, anger, happiness, surprise, and sadness. RMDD-As with acute depression are significantly less accurate than HCs in decoding happiness, sadness, and surprise. Finally, no significant differences were found between HCs and RMDD-Cs in a compensation phase. The different communication channels and the types of emotion play a significant role in limiting the decoding accuracy.
... For instance, there is evidence of diverse attention biases toward threat, especially among anxious and fearful or phobic individuals (Bar-Haim, Lamy, Pergamin, Bakermans-Kranenburg, & van IJzendorn, 2007). Of note, recent work postulates a causal role for attention biases in the development of anxiety, similarly to its proposed role in depression (e.g., Harmer, Goodwin, & Cowen, 2009;Watters & Williams, 2011), a psychopathology that is simultaneously characterized by dysfunctional expectations. ...
... The identification of causal cognitive processes will enable therapists to address pathological fear and anxiety at its roots, which promises better treatment outcomes. Similar efforts have been conducted in the context of depression: For instance, self-reported negativity bias was related to more accurate detection of negative facial expressions (disgust and sadness), as well as to a greater tendency to interpret neutral facial expressions as angry (Watters & Williams, 2011). In addition, other works (Di Simplicio et al., 2014;Harmer et al., 2009) demonstrate that the common pharmacological treatments to depression, serotonin-specific reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), modulate attention biases and change the balance from maladaptive enhanced orienting of attention to negative information to a more balanced orienting toward positive stimuli. ...
Healthy individuals often exhibit prioritized processing of aversive information, as manifested in enhanced orientation of attention to threatening stimuli compared with neutral items. In contrast to this adaptive behavior, anxious, fearful, and phobic individuals show exaggerated attention biases to threat. In addition, they overestimate the likelihood of encountering their feared stimulus and the severity of the consequences; both are examples of expectancy biases. The co-occurrence of attention and expectancy biases in fear and anxiety raises the question about causal influences. Herein, we summarize findings related to expectancy biases in fear and anxiety, and their association with attention biases. We suggest that evidence calls for more comprehensive research strategies in the investigation of mutual influences between expectancy and attention biases, as well as their combined effects on fear and anxiety. Moreover, both types of bias need to be related to other types of distorted information processing commonly observed in fear and anxiety (e.g., memory and interpretation biases). Finally, we propose new research directions that may be worth considering in developing more effective treatments for anxiety disorders.
... MDD is a mood disorder with a complex pattern of interlinked emotional disturbances. Among them, a reduced reward perception and valuation as well as negativity bias (Watters and Williams 2011) "referring to selective attention to negative rather than positive information" constitute a stable feature. Further, depression is often accompanied by deficits in cognition, like declarative learning and memory which might be a consequence of impaired hippocampal neurogenesis (Sapolsky 2004). ...
... In contrast, valence-related modulation of oscillatory activity pattern as well as changes in behavioral performance during chronic DBS occurred during the emotional empathy task pointing to enhanced processing of negative emotional stimuli. This larger empathic sharing for negative stimuli provides evidence for a negativity bias (Watters and Williams 2011) in our patients during execution of the emotional empathy tasks, which is in line with previous studies (Williams et al. 2009) and the general view on negativity bias in depression (Disner et al. 2011) showing enhanced attention specifically for stimuli depicting negative emotions (Wolkenstein et al. 2011). Empathizing with other people's emotional states requires intact emotion recognition ability and the capacity to maintain a self-other distinction (Decety and Meyer 2008). ...
Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a promising approach in treatment-resistant depression (TRD). TRD is associated with problems in interpersonal relationships, which might be linked to impaired empathy. Here, we investigate the influence of DBS in the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC) on empathy in patients with TRD and explore the pattern of oscillatory sgACC activity during performance of the multifaceted empathy test. We recorded local field potential activity directly from sgACC via DBS electrodes in patients. Based on previous behavioral findings, we expected disrupted empathy networks. Patients showed increased empathic involvement ratings toward negative stimuli as compared with healthy subjects that were significantly reduced after 6 months of DBS. Stimulus-related oscillatory activity pattern revealed a broad desynchronization in the beta (14-35 Hz) band that was significantly larger during patients' reported emotional empathy for negative stimuli than when patients reported to have no empathy. Beta desynchronization for empathic involvement correlated with self-reported severity of depression. Our results indicate a "negativity bias" in patients that can be reduced by DBS. Moreover, direct recordings show activation of the sgACC area during emotional processing and propose that changes in beta-band oscillatory activity in the sgACC might index empathic involvement of negative emotion in TRD.
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... This is similar to what is seen in clinical affective disordersindividuals with clinical affective disorders demonstrate increased sensitivity to emotionally negative stimuli (reviewed in Exelmans and Van Den Bulck, 2014;Hamann et al., 1999). In fact, a cognitive negativity bias towards emotionally negative stimuli is implicated in clinical depression (Watters and Williams, 2011). For example, a negative memory bias exists for emotional stimuli in clinically depressed patients who, relative to non-depressed controls, are more likely to remember sad faces (Ridout et al., 2003). ...
... However, we did not find any relationship between affective symptomatology and our negative cognitive bias measure. This is perhaps surprisingespecially for our measure of depressive symptomatology (CES-D), as depression has been implicated strongly in an increase in negative emotional memory recall (Bradley and Mathews, 1983;Denny and Hunt, 1992;Ridout et al., 2003;Watkins et al., 1992) and negative emotion biases are apparent in atrisk populations (Watters and Williams, 2011). It is possible that our results represent a boundary condition where the direct relationship between affective symptoms and emotional biases are not apparent in a subclinical not at-risk population. ...
Poor sleep quality has been demonstrated to diminish cognitive performance, impair psychosocial functioning and alter the perception of stress. At present, however, there is little understanding of how sleep quality affects emotion processing. The aim of the present study was to determine the extent to which sleep quality, measured through the Pittsburg Sleep Quality Index, influences affective symptoms as well as the interaction between stress and performance on an emotional memory test and sustained attention task. To that end, 154 undergraduate students (mean age: 21.27 years, standard deviation = 4.03) completed a series of measures, including the Pittsburg Sleep Quality Index, the Sustained Attention to Response Task, an emotion picture recognition task and affective symptom questionnaires following either a control or physical stress manipulation, the cold pressor test. As sleep quality and psychosocial functioning differ among chronotypes, we also included chronotype and time of day as variables of interest to ensure that the effects of sleep quality on the emotional and non-emotional tasks were not attributed to these related factors. We found that poor sleep quality is related to greater depressive symptoms, anxiety and mood disturbances. While an overall relationship between global Pittsburg Sleep Quality Index score and emotion and attention measures was not supported, poor sleep quality, as an independent component, was associated with better memory for negative stimuli and a deficit in sustained attention to non-emotional stimuli. Importantly, these effects were not sensitive to stress, chronotype or time of day. Combined, these results suggest that individuals with poor sleep quality show an increase in affective symptomatology as well as a negative cognitive bias with a concomitant decrease in sustained attention to non-emotional stimuli.
© 2015 European Sleep Research Society.
... Thus, future research on the screening function of the CFSS is warranted to identify vulnerable groups and provide them with tailored support. Fourth, the possible state of emotional negativity may bias the response to self-report measures of cognitive impairment (Watters and Williams, 2011). The negativity bias may obscure the identification of the scale structure of the Chinese CFSS. ...
Background:
The Cognitive Functioning Self-Assessment Scale (CFSS) was developed to allow the self-assessment of perceived cognitive functioning. It has been tested with satisfactory reliability and validity but was not available for the Chinese population. This study aimed to adapt and validate the Chinese version of the CFSS for community-dwelling adults.
Methods:
A cross-sectional study of a sample of 1,002 Chinese adults from the general population was conducted online (July-August 2022). The Chinese version of the CFSS with 18 items was created through translation, cognitive debriefing, and psychometric evaluation. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was performed on the first half of the randomly split sample. A model derived from EFA was confirmed by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) in the second half of the sample. The model fits were further evaluated with and without subgrouping by age, gender, and education level. Internal consistency was assessed using Cronbach's alpha (α) and McDonald's omega hierarchical coefficients (ωH).
Results:
EFA (n = 460) revealed a three-factor solution, including spatio-temporal orientation, attention, and memory, which explained 51% of the total variance. The second-order CFA (n = 510) demonstrated a good fit: CFI = 0.951, TLI = 0.944, RMSEA = 0.054, SRMR = 0.040. A second-order multiple-group analysis showed that the structure was invariant by age, gender, and education level. The total CFSS score was significantly associated with the Chinese version of the nine-item Patient Health Questionnaire (r = 0.56, p< 0.001) and the Chinese version of the seven-item General Anxiety Disorder (r = 0.53, p<0.001). The internal consistency reliability was satisfactory, with α = 0.94 and ωH = 0.84. The item-total correlation coefficients ranged from 0.58 to 0.72.
Conclusion:
The Chinese version of the CFSS possesses good item characteristics, satisfactory validity, and reliability for assessing self-reported cognitive functioning among community-dwelling adults. It is a feasible and appropriate self-assessment instrument to examine cognitive functioning in the Hong Kong Chinese population, which contributes to monitoring and developing strategies to prevent and manage cognitive impairment and disorders for the public's cognitive health and well-being.
... These processing biases, described in the literature as negativity bias, have been repeatedly reported in studies investigating acute or remitted depressed individuals. Moreover, the negativity bias has been confirmed in vulnerable individuals, i.e., individuals at risk of depression e.g., see [4][5][6][7][8][9]. According to cognitive vulnerability models, two major cognitive risk factors can be identified that promote the occurrence and severity of depressive symptoms and the development of depressive symptoms prior to a Figure 1. ...
Depression is a frequent mental affective disorder. Cognitive vulnerability models propose two major cognitive risk factors that favor the onset and severity of depressive symptoms. These include a pronounced self-focus, as well as a negative emotional processing bias. According to two-process models of cognitive vulnerability, these two risk factors are not independent from each other, but affect information processing already at an early perceptual processing level. Simultaneously, a processing advantage for self-related positive information including better memory for positive than negative information has been associated with mental health and well-being. This perspective paper introduces a research framework that discusses how EEG-ERP methodology can serve as a standardized tool for the decoding of negative and positive processing biases and their potential use as risk markers of cognitive vulnerability for depression, on the one hand, and as protective indicators of well-being, on the other hand. Previous results from EEG-ERP studies investigating the time-course of self-referential emotional processing are introduced, summarized, and discussed with respect to the specificity of depression-related processing and the importance of EEG-ERP-based experimental testing for well-being and the prevention and treatment of depressive disorders.
... Both studies used money as a reward and found that individuals with depression and healthy individuals did not differ in emotional reactivity towards punishment or no reward, which was reflected in the affect rating feedback negativity (Liu et al., 2014;McFarland and Klein, 2009). Moreover, other research has revealed that individuals with depression are more biased towards negative stimuli (Fossati, 2008;Watters and Williams, 2011). Thus, it appears that negative emotional reactivity in the clinically depressed population may be either normal or more intense than in healthy individuals, rather than weaker. ...
Background
Depressed individuals experience deficits in emotional reactivity. One well-established theory is the Emotion Context Insensitivity (ECI) theory. To better understand impairments in emotional reactivity, we investigated whether the ECI theory is applicable to anticipatory, consummatory, and remembered affect, in both clinical and subclinical depression.
Methods
Participants were divided into four groups: Major Depressive Disorder Group (MDD, N = 60), Control Group for MDD (ControlMDD, N = 50), Subclinical Depression Group (SD, N = 56), and Control Group for SD (ControlSD, N = 56). The Hamilton Depression Rating Scale and the Beck Depression Inventory were used to assess the severity of depression and anhedonia symptoms. The Monetary Incentive Delay Task evaluated participants' affective responses towards monetary stimuli.
Results
The MDD group was more insensitive to both monetary reward and loss across most types of affect than was the control group. Compared with the controls, the SD group exhibited lower reactivity in anticipatory positive affect but enhanced reactivity in consummatory positive, anticipatory, and remembered negative affect.
Limitations
Emotional affect was evaluated by subjective ratings, which may lack objectivity. Additionally, laboratory settings and monetary rewards used in this study may cause the results less generalized to daily life and to other types of rewards.
Conclusion
The pattern of emotional reactivity in the MDD group was partly consistent with the ECI theory, whereas the SD group showed greater arousal and instability of emotional reactions. These different patterns could facilitate the understanding of emotional reactivity and develop further treatments across the course of depression.
... Interestingly, in a study of middle-aged adults, there was less concordance between perceived sleep quality and self-reported sleep duration among individuals with higher depressive symptoms [76]. A potential explanation for a disconnect between perceived sleep quality and other measures of sleep may be that negative attention biases related to depression lead to over-reporting or exaggerated estimations of poor sleep quality [80]. It is also possible that actigraphy-assessed sleep efficiency fails to capture meaningful aspects of the sleep experience, such as undetected brief episodes of wakefulness that may affect how rested participants feel [81]. ...
Although there is a strong association between depressive symptoms and markers of inflammation, it remains unclear whether depressive symptoms at one point in life may predict inflammation later in life. Moreover, despite extant literature linking sleep with both depressive symptoms and inflammation, there is little research investigating poor sleep as a mechanism linking depressive symptoms with later inflammation. The links between depression and physical health can also vary by gender. In longitudinal analyses with data from the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study, we examined whether depressive symptoms were associated with inflammatory markers 11 years later and whether these associations were mediated by sleep disturbances or moderated by gender. Participants reported depressive symptoms and demographic information at baseline. At 11-year follow-up, the same participants ( n = 968) reported depressive symptoms, sleep quality and duration using validated scale items, and provided a blood sample from which inflammatory markers interleukin-6 (IL-6) and C-reactive protein (CRP) were quantified. Actigraphy assessment of sleep was obtained in a subsample ( n = 276). After adjusting for concurrent depressive symptoms and other relevant covariates, baseline depressive symptoms were associated with CRP 11 years later in the full sample, and with IL-6 among women. Subjective sleep quality mediated the association between depressive symptoms and CRP. Results suggest that depressive symptoms may be longitudinally associated with inflammation; however, directionality issues cannot be determined from the present work, particularly as inflammation markers (which might have been associated with baseline depressive symptoms) were not available at baseline. Findings further suggest that longitudinal associations between depressive symptoms and inflammation may potentially be explained by sleep and may reflect gender specific patterns.
... Moreover, Li et al. observed that healthy volunteers with capsaicin-induced pain could show disturbed processing (e.g., a longer reaction time) of emotions, especially of sadness. It should be noted that the conscious and unconscious attentional biases for negative emotions are a risk marker of depression (Watters and Williams, 2011). These studies hinted at the necessity of psychological interventions for patients with pain and depression. ...
... However, we demonstrated that not only the kind of LE (positive/negative) but also the subjective evaluation of the LE impacts future health outcomes. Thus, MDD was more strongly associated with the emotional valence ratings of LEs than with the occurrence of LEs per se [48,53,54]. In line with former research describing hyperactive emotional responses in maltreated subjects [55][56][57], we observed more negative emotional valence ratings also to be associated with more childhood trauma. ...
Background: Life events (LEs) are associated with future physical and mental health. They are crucial for understanding the pathways to mental disorders as well as the interactions with biological parameters. However, deeper insight is needed into the complex interplay between the type of LE, its subjective evaluation and accompanying factors such as social support. The "Stralsund Life Event List" (SEL) was developed to facilitate this research. Methods: The SEL is a standardized interview that assesses the time of occurrence and frequency of 81 LEs, their subjective emotional valence, the perceived social support during the LE experience and the impact of past LEs on present life. Data from 2265 subjects from the general population-based cohort study "Study of Health in Pomerania" (SHIP) were analysed. Based on the mean emotional valence ratings of the whole sample, LEs were categorized as "positive" or "negative". For verification, the SEL was related to lifetime major depressive disorder (MDD; Munich Composite International Diagnostic Interview), childhood trauma (Childhood Trauma Questionnaire), resilience (Resilience Scale) and subjective health (SF-12 Health Survey). Results: The report of lifetime MDD was associated with more negative emotional valence ratings of negative LEs (OR = 2.96, p < 0.0001). Negative LEs (b = 0.071, p < 0.0001, beta = 0.25) and more negative emotional valence ratings of positive LEs (b = 3.74, p < 0.0001, beta = 0.11) were positively associated with childhood trauma. In contrast, more positive emotional valence ratings of positive LEs were associated with higher resilience (b = -7.05, p < 0.0001, beta = 0.13), and a lower present impact of past negative LEs was associated with better subjective health (b = 2.79, p = 0.001, beta = 0.05). The internal consistency of the generated scores varied considerably, but the mean value was acceptable (averaged Cronbach's alpha > 0.75). Conclusions: The SEL is a valid instrument that enables the analysis of the number and frequency of LEs, their emotional valence, perceived social support and current impact on life on a global score and on an individual item level. Thus, we can recommend its use in research settings that require the assessment and analysis of the relationship between the occurrence and subjective evaluation of LEs as well as the complex balance between distressing and stabilizing life experiences.
... Computerized tests of cognitive control performance will be measured offline using WebNeuro [51][52][53]. These tasks will be executed on a computer by the veteran at the Baseline, 1 Week, and Post-treatment research assessment sessions. ...
Background
Although repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (‘TMS’) is becoming a gold standard treatment for pharmacoresistant depression, we lack neural target biomarkers for identifying who is most likely to respond to TMS and why. To address this gap in knowledge we evaluate neural targets defined by activation and functional connectivity of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex-anchored cognitive control circuit, regions of the default mode network and attention circuit, and interactions with the subgenual anterior cingulate. We evaluate whether these targets and interactions between them change in a dose-dependent manner, whether changes in these neural targets correspond to changes in cognitive behavioral performance, and whether baseline and early change in neural target and cognitive behavioral performance predict subsequent symptom severity, suicidality, and quality of life outcomes. This study is designed as a pragmatic, mechanistic trial partnering with the National Clinical TMS Program of the Veteran’s Health Administration.
Methods
Target enrollment consists of 100 veterans with pharmacoresistant Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). All veterans will receive a clinical course of TMS and will be assessed at ‘baseline’ pre-TMS commencement, ‘first week’ after initiation of TMS (targeting five sessions) and ‘post-treatment’ at the completion of TMS (targeting 30 sessions). Veterans will be assessed using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a cognitive behavioral performance battery, and established questionnaires. Multivariate linear mixed models will be used to assess whether neural targets change with TMS as a function of dose (Aim 1), whether extent and change of neural target relates to and predicts extent of behavioral performance (Aim 3), and whether extent of neural target change predicts improvement in symptom severity, suicidality, and quality of life (Aim 3). For all three aims, we will also assess the contribution of baseline moderators such as biological sex and age.
Discussion
To our knowledge, our study will be the first pragmatic, mechanistic observational trial to use fMRI imaging and cognitive-behavioral performance as biomarkers of TMS treatment response in pharmacoresistant MDD. The results of this trial will allow providers to select suitable candidates for TMS treatment and better predict treatment response by assessing circuit connectivity and cognitive-behavioral performance at baseline and during early treatment.
Trial registration
ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04663481 , December 5th, 2020, retrospectively registered. The first veteran was enrolled October 30th, 2020.
... Study 2 showed that PWA are more attuned to unresponsive communication partner behaviors than their neurotypical peers, which leads to more intense negative emotional reactions. Because a bias toward negative information can indicate risk for depression and anxiety (Watters & Williams, 2011;Williams et al., 2009), this finding highlights the need to further understand relationships between aphasia and mood disorders. The emphasis that PWA put on unresponsive partner behaviors and negative emotions may indicate signs of depression or anxiety or at least make them vulnerable to socially challenging communication situations. ...
Purpose
Because people with aphasia (PWA) frequently interact with partners who are unresponsive to their communicative attempts, we investigated how partner responsiveness affects quantitative measures of spoken language and subjective reactions during story retell.
Method
A quantitative study and a qualitative study were conducted. In Study 1, participants with aphasia and controls retold short stories to a communication partner who indicated interest through supportive backchannel responses (responsive) and another who indicated disinterest through unsupportive backchannel responses (unresponsive). Story retell accuracy, delivery speed, and ratings of psychological stress were measured and compared. In Study 2, participants completed semistructured interviews about their story retell experience, which were recorded, transcribed, and coded using qualitative analysis software.
Results
Quantitative results revealed increased psychological stress and decreased delivery speed across all participant groups during the unresponsive partner condition. Effects on delivery speed were more consistent for controls than participants with aphasia. Qualitative results revealed that participants with aphasia were more attuned to unresponsive partner behaviors than controls and reported stronger and more frequent emotional reactions. Partner responsiveness also affected how PWA perceived and coped with the communication experience.
Conclusions
Combined quantitative and qualitative findings suggest that, while unresponsive communication partners may not have robust effects on spoken language, they elicit strong emotional reactions from PWA and affect their communication experience. These findings support the need for communication partner training and suggest that training PWA on emotion regulation or relaxation techniques may help assuage their anxiety during socially challenging everyday communication and increase social participation.
Supplemental Material
https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.11368028
... Additionally, a rapid response to biologically relevant stimuli, for example, snakes, is believed to be evolutionarily significant to us [33,34]. Numerous studies revealed that both healthy individuals and depressive patients showed negative biases when processing facial expressions [35][36][37][38], and a review showed that negative bias is an important risk factor in depression [39]. Thus, we hypothesized that (3) individuals with subthreshold depression would show a negative bias when completing the ecological ME recognition task. ...
The micro-expression (ME) processing characteristics of patients with depression has been studied but has not been investigated in people with subthreshold depression. Based on this, by adopting the ecological MEs recognition paradigm, this study aimed to explore ME recognition in people with subthreshold depression. A 4 (background expression: happy, neutral, sad and fearful) × 4 (ME: happy, neutral, sad, and fearful) study was designed; two groups of participants (experimental group with subthreshold depression vs. healthy control group, 32 participants in each group) were asked to complete the ecological ME recognition task, and the corresponding accuracy (ACC) and reaction time (RT) were analyzed. Results: (1) Under different background conditions, recognizing happy MEs had the highest ACC and shortest RT. (2) There was no significant difference in the ACC and RT between experimental and control groups. (3)In different contexts, individuals with subthreshold depression tended to misjudge neutral, sad, and fearful MEs as happy, while neutral MEs were misjudged as sad and fearful. (4) The performance of individuals with subthreshold depression in the ecological ME recognition task were influenced by the type of ME; they showed highest ACC and shortest RT when recognizing happy MEs (vs. the other MEs). Conclusions: (1) The performance of individuals’ ecological ME recognition were influenced by the background expression, and this embodied the need for ecological ME recognition. (2) Individuals with subthreshold depression showed normal ecological ME recognition ability. (3) In terms of misjudgment, individuals with subthreshold depression showed both positive and negative bias, when completing the ecological ME recognition task. (4) Compared with the other MEs, happy MEs showed an advantage recognition effect for individuals with subthreshold depression who completed the ecological ME recognition task.
... However, we demonstrated that not only the kind of LE (positive/negative) but also the subjective evaluation of the LE impacts future health outcomes. Thus, MDD was more strongly associated with the emotional valence ratings of LEs than with the occurrence of LEs per se [48,53,54]. In line with former research describing hyperactive emotional responses in maltreated subjects [55][56][57], we observed more negative emotional valence ratings also to be associated with more childhood trauma. ...
Abstract Background Life events (LEs) are associated with future physical and mental health. They are crucial for understanding the pathways to mental disorders as well as the interactions with biological parameters. However, deeper insight is needed into the complex interplay between the type of LE, its subjective evaluation and accompanying factors such as social support. The “Stralsund Life Event List” (SEL) was developed to facilitate this research. Methods The SEL is a standardized interview that assesses the time of occurrence and frequency of 81 LEs, their subjective emotional valence, the perceived social support during the LE experience and the impact of past LEs on present life. Data from 2265 subjects from the general population-based cohort study “Study of Health in Pomerania” (SHIP) were analysed. Based on the mean emotional valence ratings of the whole sample, LEs were categorized as “positive” or “negative”. For verification, the SEL was related to lifetime major depressive disorder (MDD; Munich Composite International Diagnostic Interview), childhood trauma (Childhood Trauma Questionnaire), resilience (Resilience Scale) and subjective health (SF-12 Health Survey). Results The report of lifetime MDD was associated with more negative emotional valence ratings of negative LEs (OR = 2.96, p
... También se ha encontrado en pacientes con depresión un sesgo negativo en la capacidad para la identificación de emociones (Eizenman et al., 2003;Siegle, Granholm, Ingram, & Matt, 2001;Watters & Williams, 2011). La teoría de la mente se refiere a la habilidad de entender y predecir el comportamiento social de los otros, al reconocer sus estados mentales y otorgarles un significado (Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Hill, Raste, & Plumb, 2001). ...
This study examines the relationship between the dependent and self-criticism Cognitive dimensions of personality with emotional, cognitive and social deficits associated with depres-sive symptoms. The sample included 91 college students, aged 18 to 24, from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and Universidad de Chile. The Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and the Depressive Experiences Questionnaire (DEQ) tests were used in order to explore the emotional state of the participants. A Stroop task and a Serial Reaction Time (SSRT) test were used in order to assess cognitive performance. In turn, the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Task (RMET) face recognition task, by Baron-Cohen, was used to assess the mentalising capacity. Sig nificant correlations were found between dependency and self-criticism dimensions, depressive symptoms and cognitive performance of the participant.
... Identification will be recorded by the verbal labeling of the expressions and reaction time. Implicit priming of reaction time to "old/new" memory recognition of faces, primed by prior exposure to facial expressions of threat versus neutral, will be used to elicit biases to threat using an established procedure (Watters & Williams, 2011). The bias to fear will be the reaction time difference (in milliseconds) for priming due to threat minus neutral. ...
The ENGAGE study: Integrating neuroimaging, virtual reality and smartphone sensing to understand self-regulation for managing depression and obesity in a precision medicine model, Behaviour Research and Therapy (2017), Precision medicine models for personalizing achieving sustained behavior change are largely outside of current clinical practice. Yet, changing self-regulatory behaviors is fundamental to the self-management of complex lifestyle-related chronic conditions such as depression and obesity-two top contributors to the global burden of disease and disability. To optimize treatments and address these burdens, behavior change and self-regulation must be better understood in relation to their neurobiological underpinnings. Here, we present the conceptual framework and protocol for a novel study, "Engaging self-regulation targets to understand the mechanisms of behavior change and improve mood and weight outcomes (ENGAGE)". The ENGAGE study integrates neuroscience with behavioral science to better understand the self-regulation related mechanisms of behavior change for improving mood and weight outcomes among adults with comorbid depression and obesity. We collect assays of three self-regulation targets (emotion, cognition, and self-reflection) in multiple settings: neuroimaging and behavioral lab-based measures, virtual reality, and passive smartphone sampling. By connecting human neuroscience and behavioral science in this manner within the ENGAGE study, we develop a prototype for elucidating the underlying self-regulation mechanisms of behavior change outcomes and their application in optimizing intervention strategies for multiple chronic diseases.
... In addition, OCD patients reported experiencing unpleasant odors as subjectively more unpleasant and intense in relation to their increased anterior insula response, and they experienced pleasant odors as less pleasant (numerically), and less intense in the case of vanilla, than HC. It may be that, similar to patients with major depression (Watters and Williams, 2011), OCD patients have a negative cognitive bias and experience all stimuli, regardless of sensory domain, as being slightly more negative than HC, so even "pleasurable" stimuli are experienced as less pleasant (Jhung et al., 2010), although this hypothesis is speculative and requires further investigation. Patients' increased insular reactivity to both pleasant and unpleasant odors might reflect their propensity to experience negative emotions, which might be a vulnerability factor for OCD (Schienle et al., 2005). ...
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) patients show increased insula activation to disgust-inducing images compared to healthy controls (HC). We explored whether this disgust reactivity was also present in the olfactory domain by conducting the first fMRI study of olfaction in OCD. Neural activation in response to pleasant and unpleasant odors (vs. unscented air) was investigated in 15 OCD and 15 HC participants using fMRI. OCD participants (vs. HC) had increased left anterior insula activation to unpleasant odors (vs. unscented air), which positively correlated with their disgust sensitivity and ratings of the unpleasantness and intensity of those odors. OCD participants (vs. HC) showed increased activation of caudate nucleus and left anterior and posterior insula to pleasant odors (vs. unscented air), which positively correlated with their OCD symptom severity, trait anxiety, frequency of feeling disgust, and odor intensity ratings. OCD participants had increased anterior insula activation to both pleasant and unpleasant odors, which correlated with their OCD symptoms, anxiety, disgust sensitivity, and frequency of feeling disgust. OCD patients might have a negative cognitive bias and experience all stimuli, regardless of valence, as being more unpleasant than healthy people. These findings further elucidate the neural underpinnings of OCD and may contribute to more effective treatments.
... También se ha encontrado en pacientes con depresión un sesgo negativo en la capacidad para la identificación de emociones (Eizenman et al., 2003;Siegle, Granholm, Ingram, & Matt, 2001;Watters & Williams, 2011). La teoría de la mente se refiere a la habilidad de entender y predecir el comportamiento social de los otros, al reconocer sus estados mentales y otorgarles un significado (Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Hill, Raste, & Plumb, 2001). ...
El presente estudio explora la relación entre las dimensiones de personalidad dependiente y autocrítica, con los déficits emocionales, cognitivos y sociales asociados a la sintomatología depresiva. La muestra del estudio la conformaron 91 estudiantes universitarios pertenecientes a la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile y a la Universidad de Chile, con edades comprendidas entre los 18 y 24 años. Para explorar el estado emocional de los participantes se utilizaron los test Inventario de Depresión de Beck (BDI) y Depressive Experiences Questionnaire (DEQ). Con el fin de evaluar el desempeño cognitivo, se utilizaron: una tarea tipo Stroop y la prueba de Tiempo de Reacción Serial (SSRT), y para evaluar el nivel de mentalización, la tarea de reconocimiento facial Reading the Mind in the Eyes Task (RMET) de Baron-Cohen. Se encontraron correlaciones significativas entre las dimensiones dependencia y autocrítica, la sintomatología depresiva y el desempeño cognitivo de los participantes.
... Identification is recorded by the verbal labeling of the expressions and the reaction time to do so. Implicit priming of reaction time to "old/ new" memory recognition of faces, primed by prior exposure to facial expressions of threat versus neutral, to elicit biases to threat using an established protocol [57]. The bias to fear is the reaction time difference (in milliseconds) for priming due to threat minus neutral. ...
Background
Understanding how brain circuit dysfunctions relate to specific symptoms offers promise for developing a brain-based taxonomy for classifying psychopathology, identifying targets for mechanistic studies and ultimately for guiding treatment choice. The goal of the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) initiative of the National Institute of Mental Health is to accelerate the development of such neurobiological models of mental disorder independent of traditional diagnostic criteria. In our RDoC Anxiety and Depression (“RAD”) project we focus trans-diagnostically on the spectrum of depression and anxiety psychopathology. Our aims are a) to use brain imaging to define cohesive dimensions defined by dysfunction of circuits involved in reactivity to and regulation of negatively valenced emotional stimulation and in cognitive control, b) to assess the relationships between these dimension and specific symptoms, behavioral performance and the real world capacity to function socially and at work and c) to assess the stability of brain-symptom-behavior-function relationships over time.
Methods and design
Here we present the protocol for the “RAD” project, one of the first RDoC studies to use brain circuit functioning to define new dimensions of psychopathology. The RAD project follows baseline-follow up design. In line with RDoC principles we use a strategy for recruiting all clients who “walk through the door” of a large community mental health clinic as well as the surrounding community. The clinic attends to a broad spectrum of anxiety and mood-related symptoms. Participants are unmedicated and studied at baseline using a standardized battery of functional brain imaging, structural brain imaging and behavioral probes that assay constructs of threat reactivity, threat regulation and cognitive control. The battery also includes self-report measures of anxiety and mood symptoms, and social and occupational functioning. After baseline assessments, therapists in the clinic apply treatment planning as usual. Follow-up assessments are undertaken at 3 months, to establish the reliability of brain–based subgroups over time and to assess whether these subgroups predict real–world functional capacity over time. First enrollment was August 2013, and is ongoing.
Discussion
This project is designed to advance knowledge toward a neural circuit taxonomy for mental disorder. Data will be shared via the RDoC database for dissemination to the scientific community. The clinical translational neuroscience goals of the project are to develop brain-behavior profile reports for each individual participant and to refine these reports with therapist feedback. Reporting of results is expected from December 2016 onward.
Trial registration
ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02220309. Registered: August 13, 2014.
... Depression activates a complex network of depression-related emotions that exert a negatively biased influence on processing stimuli, starting a vicious cycle in which it becomes more difficult to activate areas of positive emotions, thereby perpetuating the negative mood. Perhaps the most important common feature of all these theories is the systematic negativity bias that accompanies depression, producing a hyper-reactivity to negative emotion [148,149], and forcing the existence of a negative loop which leads to cognitive-emotional impairment and all its consequences. If that loop is disrupted, normal processing will ensue and the depressed mood will disappear. ...
Although several international guidelines recommend exercise to reduce symptomsof Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), data concerning the long-term effects of exercisein depression are still extremely scarce. Therefore, and in order to assess these long-termeffects, we have evaluated treatment-resistant MDD patients previously enrolled in amoderate intensity 12 week exercise program at 3 and 6 months after the end of theprogram, regarding HAMD17, BDI, GAF, CGI-S, WHOQOL-Bref and SF-36. Resultsshow that 47% of patients in the exercise group continued to exercise at follow-up. Those who continued to exercise maintained the same depression and functional parametersthey showed after the 12 week exercise program, which were all improved compared tothe initial values (p < 0.05). Those who stopped exercising showed worse HAMD17,GAF and CGI-S (p < 0.05) at 6 months follow-up than at the end of the exercise program.All patient groups maintained their QoL scores at 6 month follow-up compared to thescores at the end of the 12 week exercise program, regardless of continuing to exercise ornot. Therefore, we suggest that positive effects of exercise on depression and functioningof treatment-resistant MDD only persist if exercise is continued over time. QoLimprovements are maintained after 6 months follow-up, even for patients who stop exercising.
... Отличительной особенностью феномена является непроизвольное перераспределение ресурсов внимания в пользу высокозначимых или связанных с выживанием сигналов, активирующих оборонительную или подкрепляющую мотивационную систему. В результатах нейропсихологического исследования зрительного восприятия положительных и отрицательных мотивационных стимулов эмоциональный перекос выражается в виде большей скорости восприятия угрожающей информации в ущерб подкрепляющей угрозе [8,[11][12][13]. Предполагается, что такая приоритетная перцептивная обработка значимой информации обеспечивается с помощью механизмов мотивационного внимания [8,[14][15][16]. ...
Aim: to investigate cardiovascular stress-reactivity in association with individual preconscious affective biases to threatening and appetitive facial stimuli. Patients and methods: preconscious affective biases were assessed in healthy individuals (n =38, mean age M =28,10 years, 1SD =8,64) using a modified (masked) version of a pictorial emotional Stroop task (backward masking of the angry, fearful and joyful faces). Results: it was revealed that individual preconscious bias to speeded up perception of angry faces correlates significantly with heightened anxiety, lowered platelet serotonin (5-HT) levels, sustained central overactivation of at rest (as indexed by lowered delta, theta, and beta-1 EEG power over frontal, central and posterior cortical areas) and exaggerated arterial blood pressure stress-reactivity during re-experiencing of personally relevant anger. Conclusions: considering uncovered associations, individuals with preconscious bias to speeded up perception of angry faces may be regarded as having enhanced risk to fall sick with essential hypertension, yet this perceptive bias could be seen as a putative neurobehavioral predictor of the risk.
... 41 In the context of depression, SIB most commonly expresses as cutting, scratching, and burning, 39 and has been associated with negative self-esteem and heightened emotional reactivity. 38,42 ...
Self-injury is a complex and poorly understood behavior observed in people with psychopathology or neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD). Despite the differences in etiology and progression of these distinct disease domains, it is possible that overlapping molecular pathways underlie the expression of self-injurious behaviors (SIBs). This review outlines the similarities and differences at the behavioural and molecular level, where SIBs in both conditions may involve opioid, nucleoside, and dopamine signalling. These points of convergence have important implications for treatment and research of SIB in both populations.
Crown Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
... These findings may suggest differential awareness (DMN), salience (SN), and cognitive control (ECN) of mental states in MDD that may contribute to rumination or impaired planful action based on awareness of one's own mental states. Although the current study did not include measures of these constructs, this interpretation is consistent with prevailing cognitive theories of MDD (eg, Watters and Williams, 2011). Specific to the prediction of treatment response, connectivity between anterior insula and middle temporal gyrus may subserve attention to internal affective states and social comparisons that interacted with cognitive symptoms of MDD (eg, guilt, worthlessness). ...
Despite the heterogeneous symptom presentation and complex etiology of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), functional neuroimaging studies have shown with remarkable consistency that dysfunction in mesocorticolimbic brain systems are central to the disorder. Relatively less research has focused on the identification of biological markers of response to antidepressant treatment that would serve to improve the personalized delivery of empirically-supported antidepressant interventions. In the present study, we investigated whether resting-state functional brain connectivity (rs-fcMRI) predicted response to Behavioral Activation Therapy for Depression, an empirically validated psychotherapy modality designed to increase engagement with rewarding stimuli and reduce avoidance behaviors. Twenty three unmedicated outpatients with MDD and 20 matched nondepressed controls completed rs-fcMRI scans after which the MDD group received an average of twelve sessions of psychotherapy. The mean change in Beck Depression Inventory-II scores after psychotherapy was 12.04 points, a clinically meaningful response. Resting state neuroimaging data were analyzed with a seed-based approach to investigate functional connectivity with four canonical resting state networks: the default mode network (DMN), the dorsal attention network (DAN), the executive control network (ECN), and the salience network (SN). At baseline, the MDD group was characterized by relative hyperconnectivity of multiple regions with precuneus, anterior insula, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex seeds and by relative hypoconnectivity with intraparietal sulcus, anterior insula, and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex seeds. Additionally, connectivity of the precuneus with the left middle temporal gyrus and connectivity of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex with the parahippocampal gyrus predicted the magnitude of pre-treatment MDD symptoms. Hierarchical linear modeling revealed that response to psychotherapy in the MDD group was predicted by pre-treatment connectivity of the right insula with the right middle temporal gyrus and the left intraparietal sulcus with the orbital frontal cortex. These results add to the nascent body of literature investigating pre-treatment rs-fcMRI predictors of antidepressant treatment response and is the first study to examine rs-fcMRI predictors of response to psychotherapy.Neuropsychopharmacology accepted article preview online, 12 January 2015. doi:10.1038/npp.2015.12.
... In sum, enhanced oscillatory activity denotes sustained cognitive effort and elaborative processing. Due to the inherent emotional and attentional biases associated with depression (Foland-Ross et al. 2013;Watters and Williams 2011), this pattern of enhanced cortical activity appears specific to negatively valenced material in such patients. ...
To illuminate candidate neural working mech-anisms of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) in the treatment of recurrent depressive disorder, parallel to the potential interplays between modulations in electro-cortical dynamics and depressive symptom severity and self-compassionate experience. Linear and nonlinear α and γ EEG oscillatory dynamics were examined concomitant to an affective Go/NoGo paradigm, pre-to-post MBCT or natural wait-list, in 51 recurrent depressive patients. Spe-cific EEG variables investigated were; (1) induced event-related (de-) synchronisation (ERD/ERS), (2) evoked power, and (3) inter-/intra-hemispheric coherence. Sec-ondary clinical measures included depressive severity and experiences of self-compassion. MBCT significantly downregulated α and γ power, reflecting increased cortical excitability. Enhanced α-desynchronisation/ERD was observed for negative material opposed to attenuated α-ERD towards positively valenced stimuli, suggesting acti-vation of neural networks usually hypoactive in depression, related to positive emotion regulation. MBCT-related increase in left-intra-hemispheric α-coherence of the fron-to-parietal circuit aligned with these synchronisation dynamics. Ameliorated depressive severity and increased self-compassionate experience pre-to-post MBCT corre-lated with α-ERD change. The multi-dimensional neural mechanisms of MBCT pertain to task-specific linear and non-linear neural synchronisation and connectivity network dynamics. We propose MBCT-related modulations in dif-fering cortical oscillatory bands have discrete excitatory (enacting positive emotionality) and inhibitory (disengag-ing from negative material) effects, where mediation in the α and γ bands relates to the former. Keywords Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) · Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) · ERD/ERS · Oscillatory EEG · α-Band coherence · γ-Band · EEG power Introduction
... In addition to the direct benefit on cognition, we propose that nicotinic stimulation can also have downstream effects on mood, by alleviating cognitive attributes of depression. Depressed individuals show biases towards negative stimuli [256], reactivity to negative stimuli [257], and maladaptive rumination [258]. By increasing activity in the frontal and cognitive control networks, decreasing activity of the default mode network, and improving executive functioning, nicotinic stimulation may decrease negative thought patterns in depression. ...
Depression is associated with impairments to cognition and brain function at any age, but such impairments in the elderly are particularly problematic because of the additional burden of normal cognitive aging and in some cases, structural brain pathology. Individuals with late-life depression exhibit impairments in cognition and brain structural integrity, alongside mood dysfunction. Antidepressant treatment improves symptoms in some but not all patients, and those who benefit may not return to the cognitive and functional level of nondepressed elderly. Thus, for comprehensive treatment of late-life depression, it may be necessary to address both the affective and cognitive deficits. In this review, we propose a model for the treatment of late-life depression in which nicotinic stimulation is used to improve cognitive performance and improve the efficacy of an antidepressant treatment of the syndrome of late-life depression. The cholinergic system is well-established as important to cognition. Although muscarinic stimulation may exacerbate depressive symptoms, nicotinic stimulation may improve cognition and neural functioning without a detriment to mood. While some studies of nicotinic subtype specific receptor agonists have shown promise in improving cognitive performance, less is known regarding how nicotinic receptor stimulation affects cognition in depressed elderly patients. Late-life depression thus represents a new therapeutic target for the development of nicotinic agonist drugs and parallel treatment of cognitive dysfunction along with medical and psychological approaches to treating mood dysfunction may be necessary to ensure full resolution of depressive illness in aging.
... Neither genotype group differed on SRET positive information processing. Considering this lack of association, in conjunction with the evidence favoring the centrality of the processing of negatively valenced stimuli in depression (e.g., Watters & Williams, 2011), positive information processing is not considered further here. In a replication of our previous finding , children with at least one short allele of the 5-HTTLPR had significantly higher SRET negative information processing scores than children without a short allele. ...
Preliminary work indicates that cognitive vulnerability to depression may be associated with variants of the serotonin transporter promoter polymorphism (5-HTTLPR) and the valine to methionine at position 66 (val66met) polymorphism of the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) gene; however, existing reports come from small samples. The present study sought to replicate and extend this research in a sample of 375 community-dwelling children and their parents. Following a negative mood induction, children completed a self-referent encoding task tapping memory for positive and negative self-descriptive traits. Consistent with previous work, we found that children with at least one short variant of the 5-HTTLPR had enhanced memory for negative self-descriptive traits. The BDNF val66met polymorphism had no main effect but was moderated by maternal depression, such that children with a BDNF methionine allele had a heightened memory for negative self-descriptive traits when mothers had experienced depression during children's lifetimes; in contrast, children with a methionine allele had low recall of negative traits when mothers had no depression history. The findings provide further support for the notion that the 5-HTTLPR is associated with cognitive markers of depression vulnerability and that the BDNF methionine allele moderates children's sensitivity to contextual factors.
... Thus, our findings may support results showing that females during the luteal phase are more reactive to social stress (Kirschbaum et al., 1999) and experience more intrusive recollections about negative events than females during the follicular phase (Ferree and Cahill, 2009). Moreover, studies of daily moods reported higher negative moods and depression scores during the luteal phase compared to the follicular phase (Allen et al., 2009;Reed et al., 2008) which might trigger a mood-congruent bias as seen in females suffering from premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD, Rubinow et al., 2007) or more frequently reported in depressed patients (for review see Bourke et al., 2010) and in subjects at high-risk for depression (Watters and Williams, 2011). However, we did not observe any difference in accuracy nor a general facilitation effect or mood-congruent bias in emotion processing irrespective of the task requirements, i.e. better recognition of or faster reaction times to angry/sad faces in the other tasks. ...
Evidence has accumulated that emotion recognition performance varies with menstrual cycle phase. However, according to some empathy models, facial affect recognition constitutes only one component of empathic behavior, besides emotional perspective taking and affective responsiveness. It remains unclear whether menstrual cycle phase and thus estradiol and progesterone levels are also associated with the two other empathy constructs.
Therefore, we investigated 40 healthy right-handed females, 20 during their follicular phase and 20 during their midluteal phase and compared their performance in three tasks tapping the empathic components as well as self-report data. Salivary hormone levels were obtained and correlated with performance parameters. Subjects were matched for age and education and did not differ in neuropsychological function. Analysis of empathy performance revealed a significant effect of phase in emotion recognition, showing higher accuracy in the follicular group. Regarding affective responsiveness, we observed a significant difference in reaction times, with faster responses for sad and angry stimuli in the midluteal group. No significant group difference emerged for emotional perspective taking. Furthermore, significant correlations between progesterone levels and emotion recognition accuracy and affective responsiveness emerged only in the luteal group. However, groups did not differ in self-reported empathy.
Our results indicate that menstrual cycle phase and thus ovarian hormone concentration are differentially related to empathic behavior, particularly emotion recognition and responsiveness to negative situations, with progesterone covarying with both in the luteal phase.
... The reduced connectivity in the clinical groups was associated with hypervigilance, that is characteristic to these clinical conditions, and with the diminished regulation between the amygdala and the functionally coupled regions. Given hypervigilance to identifying threat or enhanced ability to identify threat in depressed individuals (Watters and Williams, 2011), social anxiety disorder (Mueller et al, 2009) and posttraumatic stress disorder (Morey et al., 2009), those healthy people who are better at discriminating threatening facial features may exhibit the functional connectivity pattern similar to that of the clinical populations with respect to the degree of connectivity and the pattern of neural network. ...
The recognition of threatening faces is important for making social judgments. For example, threatening facial features of
defendants could affect the decisions of jurors during a trial. Previous neuroimaging studies using faces of members of the
general public have identified a pivotal role of the amygdala in perceiving threat. This functional magnetic resonance imaging
study used face photographs of male prisoners who had been convicted of first-degree murder (MUR) as threatening facial stimuli.
We compared the subjective ratings of MUR faces with those of control (CON) faces and examined how they were related to brain
activation, particularly, the modulation of the functional connectivity between the amygdala and other brain regions. The
MUR faces were perceived to be more threatening than the CON faces. The bilateral amygdala was shown to respond to both MUR
and CON faces, but subtraction analysis revealed no significant difference between the two. Functional connectivity analysis
indicated that the extent of connectivity between the left amygdala and the face-related regions (i.e. the superior temporal
sulcus, inferior temporal gyrus and fusiform gyrus) was correlated with the subjective threat rating for the faces. We have
demonstrated that the functional connectivity is modulated by vigilance for threatening facial features.
Background:
From a behavioural perspective anhedonia is defined as diminished interest in the engagement of pleasurable activities. Despite its presence across a range of psychiatric disorders, the cognitive processes that give rise to anhedonia remain unclear.
Methods:
Here we examine whether anhedonia is associated with learning from positive and negative outcomes in patients diagnosed with major depression, schizophrenia and opiate use disorder alongside a healthy control group. Responses in the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test - a task associated with healthy prefrontal cortex function - were fitted to the Attentional Learning Model (ALM) which separates learning from positive and negative feedback.
Results:
Learning from punishment, but not from reward, was negatively associated with anhedonia beyond other socio-demographic, cognitive and clinical variables. This impairment in punishment sensitivity was also associated with faster responses following negative feedback, independently of the degree of surprise.
Limitations:
Future studies should test the longitudinal association between punishment sensitivity and anhedonia also in other clinical populations controlling for the effect of specific medications.
Conclusions:
Together the results reveal that anhedonic subjects, because of their negative expectations, are less sensitive to negative feedbacks; this might lead them to persist in actions leading to negative outcomes.
Learning theories of depression propose that negative thinking is acquired through subsequent rewarding experiences and is often resistant to change even when it becomes associated with punishment. We examined whether this persistency of negative thinking is related to current and future levels of depressive symptoms among adolescents. Persistency of negative self-referent thinking was assessed by means of a decision-making task, namely the emotional reversal learning task. This task offers participants the choice between thinking about negative and positive self-related aspects. Their choice for negative self-referent thinking is initially rewarded but is later punished. Therefore, participants were expected to efficiently switch between negative and positive self-referent thinking, and to internally update their reward expectancy for these thinking options. Results showed that persistency of negative self-referent thinking was related to concurrent levels of depressive symptoms, replicating earlier findings in adults. However, persistency of negative thinking was unrelated to future levels of depressive symptoms. These findings suggest that adolescents with depressive symptoms tend to hold on to the belief that negative self-referent thinking has beneficial consequences, even when it is no longer being rewarded. This tendency should be seen as a concurrent feature of depression, as the predictive value is still in question.
Background: Binocular rivalry, a phenomenon that individuals often experience back-and-forth perceptual alterations when two distinct monocular stimuli are presented to each eye simultaneously, has been reported as a biomarker in several psychiatric disorders. It is unclear whether abnormalities of binocular rivalry in depression could exist when emotional rivaling stimuli are used, and if so, whether the emotional binocular rivalry test could provide a trait-dependent biomarker or a state-dependent biomarker.
Methods: Thirty-four individuals with subthreshold depression and thirty-one non-depressed individuals were recruited to perform a binocular rivalry task including implicit emotional processing. The participants were required to report their perceived orientations of the rival gratings in the foreground and simultaneously to neglect emotional face stimuli in the background. The participants were retested after an approximately 4-month time interval.
Results: Compared to the non-depressed group, the depressive group showed significantly stronger implicit emotional dominance at the initial assessment. However, the abnormality was not observed at the follow-up assessment. More importantly, individuals displaying stronger emotional dominance at the initial assessment were more difficult for improvement in depressive severity at the follow-up assessment. No difference was found regarding the switching rate between the depressive group and the non-depressed controls.
Conclusions: The abnormality on emotional dominance for individuals with subthreshold depression is associated with depressive symptoms over time. The current emotional binocular rivalry test may provide an objective state-dependent biomarker for distinguishing depressive individuals from healthy individuals.
Several lines of research have examined whether people with depressive symptoms have deficits in social-cognitive abilities, such as emotional reasoning skills. While many depressed people report having such deficits, it is less clear whether depressive symptoms are related to actual objective performance deficits. We examined the relationship between emotional reasoning skills (as assessed with the TEMINT) and depressive symptoms (i.e., BDI-II) in a mini meta-analysis of 11 studies with data from 1503 participants with varying levels of depression, from healthy people to clinical samples with severely depressed people. Using a random effects approach, we found a small but significant correlation between depressive symptoms and TEMINT performance (mean rz = 0.065), indicating that depressive symptoms were associated with higher emotional reasoning skills. These findings suggest that depression is unrelated to deficits in emotional reasoning, though assessed with only one test. If anything, depressive symptoms are associated with improved performance in the TEMINT. The current results point to a discrepancy between depressed people's self-evaluation of their abilities (as shown in previous research) and their actual performance. Our findings also have practical implications as they suggest that clinicians may focus on modifying depressed people's negative views of themselves, rather than on improving their skills.
Response inhibition, a crucial component of executive function, is closely related to personal impulse control, social adaption, and mental health. Previous studies have found response inhibition deficit in patients with major depressive disorder, but whether it also exists in individuals with subclinical depression (SD) remains unclear. This study aimed to identify the ability of response inhibition to emotional face stimuli both under explicit and implicit conditions in individuals with SD. Thirty‐six subclinical depressed college students and 39 healthy individuals were recruited and administered the non‐emotional, explicit, and implicit emotional stop‐signal tasks (SSTs). Mixed‐model analyses of variance were used to analyze the differences between and within groups. In implicit emotional SST, the results showed a significant longer stop‐signal response time, a shorter stop‐signal delay time, a shorter go reaction time, and a similar proportion of stop success in the SD group compared to healthy controls. However, the above indices showed no significant difference between the two groups in the non‐emotional SST and explicit emotional SST. These findings suggest a possible defect of response inhibition in implicit emotional processing in individuals with SD, which may potentially serve as a marker of susceptibility to depression and thus be applied to early screening and intervention for major depressive disorder.
Background: Individuals with depression often demonstrate an altered peripheral inflammatory profile, as well as emotion perception difficulties. However, correlations of inflammation with overall depression severity are inconsistent and inflammation may only contribute to specific symptoms. Moreover, measurement of the association between inflammation and emotion perception is sparse in adolescence, despite representing a formative window of emotional development and high-risk period for depression onset.
Method: Serum interleukin (IL)-6, tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α, and IL-1β were measured in 34 adolescents aged 12-17 with DSM-IV depressive disorders (DEP) and 29 healthy controls (HC). Participants were evaluated using the Children's Depression Rating Scale-Revised (CDRS-R) and symptom subscales were extracted based on factor analysis. Participants also completed a performance-based measure of emotion perception, the Facial Emotion Perception Test (FEPT), which assesses the accuracy of categorizing angry, fearful, sad, happy, and neutral facial emotions.
Results: IL-6 and TNF-α correlated with reported depressed mood and somatic symptoms, respectively, but not total CDRS-R score, anhedonia or observed mood, across both DEP and HC. DEP demonstrated lower accuracy for identifying angry facial expressions. Higher IL-6 was inversely related to accuracy and discrimination of angry and neutral faces across all participants. IL-1β was associated with reduced discrimination of fearful faces.
Conclusion: Inflammatory markers were sensitive to affective and somatic symptoms of depression and processing of emotional threat in adolescents. In particular, IL-6 was elevated in depressed adolescents and therefore may represent a specific target for modulating depressive symptoms and emotion processing
The Covid-19 pandemic led countries to place restrictions on the general public in order to protect their safety. These restrictions, however, may have negative psychological consequences as people are restricted in their social and leisure activities and facing daily life stressors. Investigating the relationship between how people are remembering pandemic events and thinking about their futures is important in order to begin to examine the psychological consequences-cognitive and emotional-of the Covid-19 pandemic. The present study examined how characteristics of past and future thinking relate to psychological wellbeing during the Covid-19 pandemic. In an online questionnaire study, 904 participants in Germany and the USA recalled and predicted negative and positive events related to the pandemic. Participants completed a series of questionnaires measuring cognitions and psychological symptoms. Participants' current psychological wellbeing related to how they remembered events and thought of their future. Participants reported a greater sense of reliving for past compared to future events. However, future events were more rehearsed than past events. Additionally, the emotional impact of positive and negative events differed for the past and the future. Participants seem to be strongly future oriented during the Covid-19 pandemic, but have a negative view of future events.
Emotions are species-typical patterns and can be a window to describe the human mind in action. Understanding emotion can provide invaluable insights into various mood disorders, including depression, which makes up the leading cause of disability worldwide. While emotions are not directly observable, they can be inferred via multiple components, including action intention, cognitive appraisals, physiological changes, and subjective feelings. Through various emotion-sensing technologies, the Internet of Things (IoT) is further enhancing the way technology can help perceive human emotions. Thus, the advances in such technologies could indeed provide future directions of assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of various mood disorders. With an introduction to the theories of emotion, this chapter will extend the conceptual foundations and approaches of the emotion-sensing technology in IoT, further introducing readers about emotion and attention-related biases in mood disorders. An extensive review of literature in emotion-sensing technology will provide empirical instances to existing technologies, which can help readers understand emotion analysis and extraction methods in detail, especially when used in the mental health domains. Finally, this chapter will provide practical applications, limitations, and future directions for advancing and humanizing affective computing and the IoT, and may help clinicians make informed decisions about the appropriate method for human emotion evaluation and analysis. This work, therefore, aims to enlighten mental health experts, clinicians, interface designers, and research scientists on existing emotion recognition methods and how to incorporate the IoT in emotion-sensing and further improve its methodology by considering various complexities of emotions and their interactions with other cognitive faculties and measurement variables. In short, this chapter discusses the-state-of-progress of emotion-sensing technology in the IoT with an impetus on mood disorders.
Empirical evidence that combines traditional factors and information technology factors to predict public attitudes toward to medical services is inadequate. To fill this gap, this study investigates the impact of Internet use on people’s satisfaction with medical services by employing the Chinese Social Survey for 2013, 2015 and 2017 (including 28,239 samples in total). Estimation results under the ordered probit reveal that Internet use is negatively correlated with individuals’ medical services satisfaction. The results support the negativity bias theory, namely, compared with positive information, netizens pay more attention to negative medical-related information on the Internet. The results are still reliable by adopting substitution variable methods, subdividing the samples, employing other estimation methods and carrying out placebo tests to conduct robustness checks. This study further enriches the literature on public attitudes toward medical services and provides additional policy implications for medical risk management in the digital era.
Through the Human Connectome Project (HCP) our understanding of the functional 37 connectome of the healthy brain has been dramatically accelerated. Given the pressing public 38 health need, we must increase our understanding of how connectome dysfunctions give rise to 39 disordered mental states. Mental disorders arising from high levels of negative emotion or from 40 the loss of positive emotional experience affect over 400 million people globally. Such states of 41 disordered emotion cut across multiple diagnostic categories of mood and anxiety disorders and 42 are compounded by accompanying disruptions in cognitive function. Not surprisingly, these 43 forms of psychopathology are the leading cause of disability worldwide. The Research Domain 44 Criteria (RDoC) initiative spearheaded by NIMH offers a framework for characterizing the 45 relations among connectome dysfunctions, anchored in neural circuits and phenotypic profiles 46 of behavior and self-reported symptoms. Here, we report on our Connectomes Related to 47 Human Disease protocol for integrating an RDoC framework with HCP protocols to characterize 48 connectome dysfunctions in disordered emotional states, and present quality control data from a 49 representative sample of participants. We focus on three RDoC domains and constructs most 50 relevant to depression and anxiety: 1) loss and acute threat within the Negative Valence System 51 (NVS) domain; 2) reward valuation and responsiveness within the Positive Valence System 52 (PVS) domain; and 3) working memory and cognitive control within the Cognitive System (CS) 53 domain. For 29 healthy controls, we present preliminary imaging data: functional magnetic 54 resonance imaging collected in the resting state and in tasks matching our constructs of interest 55 (“Emotion”, “Gambling” and ”Continuous Performance” tasks), as well as diffusion-weighted 56 imaging. All functional scans demonstrated good signal-to-noise ratio. Established neural 57 networks were robustly identified in the resting state condition by independent component 58 analysis. Processing of negative emotional faces significantly activated the bilateral dorsolateral 59 prefrontal and occipital cortices, fusiform gyrus and amygdalae. Reward elicited a response in 60 the bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal, parietal and occipital cortices, and in the striatum. Working 61 memory was associated with activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal, parietal, motor, temporal 62 and insular cortices, in the striatum and cerebellum. Diffusion tractography showed consistent 63 profiles of fractional anisotropy along known white matter tracts. We also show that results are 64 comparable to those in a matched sample from the HCP Healthy Young Adult data release. 65 These preliminary data provide the foundation for acquisition of 250 subjects who are 66 experiencing disordered emotional states. When complete, these data will be used to develop a 67 neurobiological model that maps connectome dysfunctions to specific behaviors and symptoms.
Methods:
Sixty healthy women were included to the study. They were divided two group labeled women with PMS (n=33) and without PMS (n=27), which is accordance with the Premenstrual Assessment Form. Then, The Facial Emotion Recognition Test (56 mixed photos with happy, surprised, fearful, sad, angry, disgusted and neutral facial expressions from Ekman & Friesen's series) was performed on each group in both the luteal and follicular phases.
Results:
The women with PMS were significantly worse in recognizing sad (p=0.003) and surprised (p=0.019) faces in the luteal phase compared to the follicular phase, whereas women without PMS were significantly worse in recognizing sad faces (p=0.008) in the luteal phase compared to the follicular phase. There were no significant differences between women with and without PMS in either the luteal phases or in the follicular phases according to facial emotion recognition (for each, p>0.05). Conclusıon: The women with PMS do not differ from women without PMS in recognizing facial emotions accurately. The low accuracy rate in the recognition of sad and surprised facial emotions in the luteal phase may lead PMS women to have more social problems.
Aim: to evaluate motor pathways involvement in children with multiple sclerosis. Patients and methods: we used transcranial magnetic stimulation method. 9 children with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (mean duration 1,68 years) and 20 controls were enrolled. Results: in most of the cases findings in multiple sclerosis group were abnormal. More often polyphasic changes of the motor evoked potentials (MEP) shape (78% of the cases) and elevation of MEP threshold (88%) were seen. Conclusions: transcranial magnetic stimulation demonstrated high sensitivity in children with multiple sclerosis. Main neurophysiologic findings in multiple sclerosis in children may reflect altering membrane excitability of motor neurons and demyelinating lesions. Axonal damage in children with multiple sclerosis are less apparent.
To investigate cardiovascular stress-reactivity in association with individual preconscious affective biases to threatening and appetitive facial stimuli.
Preconscious affective biases were assessed in healthy individuals (n = 38, mean age 28, 10 years, 1SD = 8.64) using a modified (masked) version of a pictorial emotional Stroop task (backward masking of the angry, fearful and joyful faces).
It was revealed that individual preconscious bias to speeded up perception of angry faces correlates significantly with heightened anxiety, lowered platelet serotonin (5-HT) levels, sustained central overactivation of at rest (as indexed by lowered delta, theta, and beta-1 EEG power over frontal, central and posterior cortical areas) and exaggerated arterial blood pressure stress-reactivity during re-experiencing of personally relevant anger.
considering uncovered associations, individuals with preconscious bias to speeded up perception of angry faces may be regarded as having enhanced risk to fall sick with essential hypertension, yet this perceptive bias could be seen as a putative neurobehavioral predictor of the risk.
We investigated the effects of emotion perception training on depressive symptoms and mood in young adults reporting high levels of depressive symptoms (trial registration: ISRCTN02532638). Participants were randomised to an intervention procedure designed to increase the perception of happiness over sadness in ambiguous facial expressions or a control procedure, and completed self-report measures of depressive symptoms and mood. Those in the intervention condition had lower depressive symptoms and negative mood at 2-week follow-up, but there was no statistical evidence for a difference. There was some evidence for increased positive mood. Modification of emotional perception may lead to an increase in positive affect.
Sixteen clinically depressed patients and sixteen healthy controls were presented with a set of emotional facial expressions and were asked to identify the emotion portrayed by each face. They, were subsequently given a recognition memory test for these faces. There was no difference between the groups in terms of their ability to identify emotion between from faces. All participants identified emotional expressions more accurately than neutral expressions, with happy expressions being identified most accurately. During the recognition memory phase the depressed patients demonstrated superior memory for sad expressions, and inferior memory for happy expressions, relative to neutral expressions. Conversely, the controls demonstrated superior memory for happy expressions, and inferior memory for sad expressions, relative to neutral expressions. These results are discussed in terms of the cognitive model of depression proposed by Williams, Watts, MacLeod, and Mathews (1997).
Research on relationships between anxiety and depression has proceeded at a rapid pace since the 1980s. The similarities and differences between these two conditions, as well as many of the important features of the comorbidity of these disorders, are well understood. The genotypic structure of anxiety and depression is also fairly well documented. Generalized anxiety and ma-jor depression share a common genetic diathesis, but the anxiety disorders themselves are genetically hetergeneous. Sophisticated phenotypic models have also emerged, with data converging on an integrative hierarchical model of mood and anxiety disorders in which each individual syndrome contains both a common and a unique component. Finally, considerable progress has been made in understanding cognitive aspects of these disor-ders. This work has focused on both the cognitive content of anxiety and de-pression and on the effects that anxiety and depression have on information processing for mood-congruent material.
We examine and refine the Fagerström Tolerance Questionnaire (FTQ; Fagerström, 1978). The relation between each FTQ item and biochemical measures of heaviness of smoking was examined in 254 smokers. We found that the nicotine rating item and the inhalation item were unrelated to any of our biochemical measures and these two items were primary contributors to psychometric deficiencies in the FTQ. We also found that a revised scoring of time to the first cigarette of the day (TTF) and number of cigarettes smoked per day (CPD) improved the scale. We present a revision of the FTQ: the Fagerström Test for Nicotine Dependence (FTND).
Interpersonal sensitivity to ambiguous facial expressions of emotions was examined using individual growth modeling. Generalized
socially phobic (n=54), depressed (n=44), comorbidly socially phobic and depressed individuals (n=39), and non-clinical controls (n=65) were assessed on an emotion labeling task. Patients were as good as controls in labeling happy expressions as positive,
and better than controls in labeling faint angry and sad expressions as negative. Depression and social anxiety (SA) were
positively correlated with a response bias, and negatively correlated with sensitivity, to angry expressions. Depression was
also correlated with higher sensitivity, and SA with higher response bias, to sad expressions. The effects of depression and
SA on the identification of negative expressions were sub-additive. Finally, depression, but not SA, was associated with longer
examination of happy, but not angry emotional expressions. Implications of these findings for the understanding of interpersonal
impairments in social phobia and depression are discussed.
The construction of a depression rating scale designed to be particularly sensitive to treatment effects is described. Ratings of 54 English and 52 Swedish patients on a 65 item comprehensive psychopathology scale were used to identify the 17 most commonly occurring symptoms in primary depressive illness in the combined sample. Ratings on these 17 items for 64 patients participating in studies of four different antidepressant drugs were used to create a depression scale consisting of the 10 items which showed the largest changes with treatment and the highest correlation to overall change. The inner-rater reliability of the new depression scale was high. Scores on the scale correlated significantly with scores on a standard rating scale for depression, the Hamilton Rating Scale (HRS), indicating its validity as a general severity estimate. Its capacity to differentiate between responders and non-responders to antidepressant treatment was better than the HRS, indicating greater sensitivity to change. The practical and ethical implications in terms of smaller sample sizes in clinical trials are discussed.
The study was designed with a view to examine the relationship between perception of facial affects and psychopathology. Forty normal and twenty depressive subjects were asked to recognize the facial emotions provided and to discriminate the emotional tone in terms of intensity of expression while presented in pairs. A pair comparison solution indicate that the depressives were highly evaluative in the effect of sadness and less evaluative in happiness, in comparison to normals.
Interacting with others by reading their emotional expressions is an essential social skill in humans. How this ability develops during infancy and what brain processes underpin infants' perception of emotion in different modalities are the questions dealt with in this paper.
Literature review.
The first part provides a systematic review of behavioral findings on infants' developing emotion-reading abilities. The second part presents a set of new electrophysiological studies that provide insights into the brain processes underlying infants' developing abilities. Throughout, evidence from unimodal (face or voice) and multimodal (face and voice) processing of emotion is considered. The implications of the reviewed findings for our understanding of developmental models of emotion processing are discussed.
The reviewed infant data suggest that (a) early in development, emotion enhances the sensory processing of faces and voices, (b) infants' ability to allocate increased attentional resources to negative emotional information develops earlier in the vocal domain than in the facial domain, and (c) at least by the age of 7 months, infants reliably match and recognize emotional information across face and voice.
Acute administration of an antidepressant increases positive affective processing in healthy volunteers, an effect that may be relevant to the therapeutic actions of these medications. The authors investigated whether this effect is apparent in depressed patients early in treatment, prior to changes in mood and symptoms.
In a double-blind, placebo-controlled, between-groups randomized design, the authors examined the effect of a single 4-mg dose of the norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor reboxetine on emotional processing. Thirty-three depressed patients were recruited through primary care clinics and the community and matched to 31 healthy comparison subjects. Three hours after dosing, participants were given a battery of emotional processing tasks comprising facial expression recognition, emotional categorization, and memory. Ratings of mood, anxiety, and side effects were also obtained before and after treatment.
Depressed patients who received placebo showed reduced recognition of positive facial expressions, decreased speed in responding to positive self-relevant personality adjectives, and reduced memory for this positive information compared to healthy volunteers receiving placebo. However, this effect was reversed in patients who received a single dose of reboxetine, despite the absence of changes in subjective ratings of mood or anxiety.
Antidepressant drug administration modulates emotional processing in depressed patients very early in treatment, before changes occur in mood and symptoms. This effect may ameliorate the negative biases in information processing that characterize mood and anxiety disorders. It also suggests a mechanism of action compatible with cognitive theories of depression.
The aim of the paper is to describe a standardized "Integrative Neuroscience" Platform that can be applied to elucidate brain-body mechanisms. This infrastructure includes a theoretical integration (the INTEGRATE Model). To demonstrate this infrastructure, hypotheses from the INTEGRATE Model are applied in an example investigation of the cognitive, brain and body markers of individual differences in the trait characteristic of Negativity Bias (the tendency to see oneself and one's world as negative). A sample of 270 healthy participants (18-65 years old) were grouped into equal sized matched subsets of high "Negativity Bias" and high "Positivity Bias" (n = 135 in each group). Participants were assessed using a standardized battery of psychological traits, cognition and brain and body (autonomic) activity. Greater "Negativity Bias" relative to "Positivity Bias" was characterized by greater autonomic reactivity and early neural excitation to signals of potential danger, at the timescale of Emotion (< 200 ms). Concomitantly, there was a relatively lower level of "Thinking", reflected in cognitive dimensions and associated electrical brain measures of working memory and EEG Theta power. By contrast, Negativity and Positivity Bias did not differ in levels of emotional resilience and social skills at the longer time scale of Self Regulation. This paper provides a demonstration of how an Integrative Neuroscience infrastructure can be used to elucidate the brain-body basis of trait characteristics, such as Negativity Bias, that are key indicators of risk for poor well-being and psychopathology.
Both general and social cognition are important in providing endophenotypic markers and predicting real-world functional outcomes of clinical psychiatric disorders. However, to date, focus has been on general cognition, rather than on core domains of social/emotional cognition. This study sought to determine core domains of emotion processing for both explicit identification and implicit recognition and their relationships with core domains of general cognition. Age effects and sex differences were also investigated. A sample of 1,000 healthy individuals (6 to 91 years, 53.5% female) undertook the WebNeuro tests of emotion identification and recognition and tests of general cognitive function. Factor analysis revealed seven core domains of emotion processing: speed of explicit emotion identification, speed of implicit emotion recognition, implicit emotion recognition accuracy, "threat" processing, sadness-disgust identification, "positive emotion" processing, and general "face perception." Seven corresponding core domains of general cognition were identified: information-processing speed, executive function, sustained attention/vigilance, verbal memory, working-memory capacity, inhibition/impulsivity, and sensorimotor function. Factors of emotion processing generally showed positive associations with those of general cognitive function, suggesting commonality in processing speed in particular. Moreover, age had a consistent nonlinear impact on both emotion processing and general cognitive factors, while sex differences were more specific. These findings contribute to a normative and standardized structure for assessment of emotional and general cognition in clinical groups.
A number of psychiatric and neurological disorders are characterized by impairments in facial emotion recognition. Recognition of individual emotions has implicated limbic, basal ganglionic, and frontal brain regions. Since these regions are also implicated in age-related decline and sex differences in emotion processing, an understanding of normative variation is important for assessing deficits in clinical groups. An internet-based test ("WebNeuro") was administered to 1,000 healthy participants (6 to 91 years, 53% female) to assess explicit identification of basic expressions of emotion (happiness, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, neutral). A subsequent implicit recognition condition was based on a priming protocol, in which explicit identification provided the "study" phase. Responses were most accurate for happiness and slowest for fear in the explicit condition, but least accurate for happiness and fastest for fear in the implicit condition. The effects of age, by contrast, showed a similar pattern for both explicit and implicit conditions, following a nonlinear distribution in which performance improved from childhood through adolescence and early adulthood and declined in later adulthood. Females were better than males at explicit identification of fear in particular. These findings are consistent with the priority of threat-related signals, but indicate opposing biases depending on whether emotion processing is conscious or nonconscious. The lifespan trends in emotion processing over 10 decades point to an interaction of brain-based (maturation, stability, and then atrophy of cortical and subcortical systems) and experiential contributing factors. These findings provide a robust normative platform for assessing clinical groups.
The learned helplessness hypothesis is criticized and reformulated. The old hypothesis, when applied to learned helplessness in humans, has two major problems: (a) It does not distinguish between cases in which outcomes are uncontrollable for all people and cases in which they are uncontrollable only for some people (univervsal vs. personal helplessness), and (b) it does not explain when helplessness is general and when specific, or when chronic and when acute. A reformulation based on a revision of attribution theory is proposed to resolve these inadequacies. According to the reformulation, once people perceive noncontingency, they attribute their helplessness to a cause. This cause can be stable or unstable, global or specific, and internal or external. The attribution chosen influences whether expectation of future helplessness will be chronic or acute, broad or narrow, and whether helplessness will lower self-esteem or not. The implications of this reformulation of human helplessness for the learned helplessness model of depression are outlined.
DA - 20080707IS - 0165-0327 (Print)LA - ENGPT - JOURNAL ARTICLE
• Current research demonstrates that patients with schizophrenia display deficits in a broad range of interpersonal skills. To investigate the ability of patients with schizophrenia and major depression and normal controls to process facial stimuli, four tasks were constructed from 21 photographs of faces representing standardized poses of fundamental emotions. Two tasks were designed to investigate facial identity matching independent of emotion expressed, and two tasks were designed to test emotion recognition and emotion labeling, respectively. Results indicate that while depressed patients differed from controls only on the emotion-labeling task, those with schizophrenia showed deficits on all four tasks when compared with controls and did worse than patients with depression on the emotion tasks. The findings suggest that patients with schizophrenia are impaired on a broader range of facial perception skills than those with depression, when compared with controls.
• A test-retest reliability study of the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-III-R was conducted on 592 subjects in four patient and two nonpatient sites in this country as well as one patient site in Germany. For most of the major categories, ks for current and lifetime diagnoses in the patient samples were above.60, with an overall weighted k of.61 for current and.68 for lifetime diagnoses. For the nonpatients, however, agreement was considerably lower, with a mean k of.37 for current and.51 for lifetime diagnoses. These values for the patient and nonpatient samples are roughly comparable to those obtained with other structured diagnostic instruments. Sources of diagnostic disagreement, such as inadequate training of interviewers, information variance, and low base rates for many disorders, are discussed.
The difficulties inherent in obtaining consistent and adequate diagnoses for the purposes of research and therapy have been pointed out by a number of authors. Pasamanick12 in a recent article viewed the low interclinician agreement on diagnosis as an indictment of the present state of psychiatry and called for "the development of objective, measurable and verifiable criteria of classification based not on personal or parochial considerations, but on behavioral and other objectively measurable manifestations."Attempts by other investigators to subject clinical observations and judgments to objective measurement have resulted in a wide variety of psychiatric rating scales.4,15 These have been well summarized in a review article by Lorr11 on "Rating Scales and Check Lists for the Evaluation of Psychopathology." In the area of psychological testing, a variety of paper-and-pencil tests have been devised for the purpose of measuring specific
• Data concerning familial history of psychiatric disorders are often used to assist in diagnosis, to examine the role of genetic or nongenetic familial factors in etiology, or to develop new methods of classification. Information concerning familial prevalence may be collected by two different methods: the family history method (obtaining information from the patient or a relative concerning all family members), and the family study method (interviewing directly as many relatives as possible concerning their own present or past symptomatology). This study compares these two methods. In general, the family study method is preferred since information is likely to be more accurate. The family history method leads to significant underreporting, but this can be minimized through the use of diagnostic criteria. This study reports on an instrument that has been developed for collecting information concerning family history and that provides criteria for 12 diagnoses—the Family History-Research Diagnostic Criteria. Using diagnostic criteria leads to greater sensitivity, but underreporting remains a major problem of the family history method.
This study was undertaken using the INTEGRATE Model of brain organization, which is based on a temporal continuum of emotion, thinking and self regulation. In this model, the key organizing principle of self adaption is the motivation to minimize danger and maximize reward. This principle drives brain organization across a temporal continuum spanning milliseconds to seconds, minutes and hours. The INTEGRATE Model comprises three distinct processes across this continuum. Emotion is defined by automatic action ten- dencies triggered by signals that are significant due to their relevance to minimizing danger- maximizing reward (such as abrupt, high contrast stimuli). Thinking represents cognitive functions and feelings that rely on brain and body feedback emerging from around 200 ms post-stimulus onwards. Self regulation is the modulation of emotion, thinking and feeling over time, according to more abstract adaptions to minimize danger-maximize reward. Here, we examined the impact of dispositional factors, age and genetic variation, on this temporal continuum. Brain Resource methodology provided a standardized platform for acquiring genetic, brain and behavioral data in the same 1000 healthy subjects. Results showed a “paradox” of declining function in the “thinking” time scale over the lifespan (6 to 80+ years), but a corresponding preservation or even increase in automatic functions of “emotion” and “self regulation”. This paradox was paralleled by a greater loss of grey mat- ter in cortical association areas (assessed using MRI) over age, but a relative preservation of subcortical grey matter. Genetic polymorphisms associated with both healthy func- tion and susceptibility to disorder (including the BDNFVal66Met, COMTVal158/108Met, MAOA and DRD4 tandem repeat and 5HTT-LPR polymorphisms) made specific contributions to emotion, thinking and self regulatory functions, which also varied according to age.
10.1176/appi.ajp.160.4.636
This study is concerned with the effects of task performance upon the affective state and social judgments of depressed individuals. Nondepressed and depressed male psychiatric patients were randomly assigned to an experimentally-induced superior- and inferior-performance condition. Prior to and immediately following the experimental task, Ss rated their own mood and judged photographs of male and female adults on a happiness-sadness continuum. Indices of self-confidence were also obtained. Ss in the superior-performance group in comparison to inferior-performance Ss were more self-confident, rated themselves as happier, and perceived others as happier. Depressive Ss tended to be more affected than nondepressed Ss by task performance when estimating how they would do in a future task; the groups did not differ, however, in performance effects on self-ratings or on judgments of photographs. (18 ref.)
Focuses on several major issues that are especially relevant to efforts to adequately conduct research on depression. The authors address questions about the definition of depression and about how different definitions may affect methodological decisions. The authors also describe some common methodological problems in depression research and about methodological issues in the study of vulnerability to depression. They conclude by discussing issues pertaining to the establishment of causality in depression research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The development and initial psychometric properties of the Cognition Checklist (CCL), a scale to measure the frequency of automatic thoughts relevant to anxiety and depression, are described in this article. Item analyses of the responses of 618 psychiatric outpatients identified a 14-item depression and a 12-item anxiety subscale that were significantly related, respectively, to the revised Hamilton Rating Scales for Depression and Anxiety. Patients diagnosed according to the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (
DSM-III; American Psychiatric Association, 1980) with anxiety disorders had higher mean CCL anxiety scores than patients with
DSM-III depression disorders who, in turn, had higher mean CCL depression scores. The validity of the CCL supports the content-specificity hypothesis of the cognitive model of psychopathology (Beck, 1976). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The authors present the data obtained from administering their 60-item depression questionnaire to 690 individuals of whom 40 were normal persons with high depression scores on a preliminary scale, and 50 hospital patients without clinically observed depression but with a tendency to high scores on the preliminary scale, and 50 carefully chosen hospitalized depressed patients. It is concluded that: (1) significant separation of depressed patients can be demonstrated for a large percentage of cases, (2) patients having only moderate degrees of depressive trend without specific abnormality can be differentiated, (3) depression scores for females are significantly higher than for males and become more so with increasing age, and (4) unselected patients on a psychiatric ward test higher on depression than do patients on other wards. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)