Depression and the effects of positive and negative feedback on expectations,evaluations, and performance

The present study was designed to address questions raised in previous research concerning the manner in which depressed and nondepressed individuals process and utilize environmental information. Depressed and nondepressed subjects participated in a two-part task requiring them to respond to hypothetical problematic social situations. Subjects indicated their performance expectations before completing the first part of the task and subsequently evaluated their performance. Prior to undertaking the second part of the task, subjects received personal feedback ostensibly based on their responses on the first part of the task. Subjects received feedback that was either generally favorable or generally unfavorable, or received no feedback. Subjects then indicated their expectations for the second part of the task, completed the task, and evaluated their performance. Although depressed subjects were initially less optimistic than were nondepressed subjects and evaluated their performance somewhat less favorably, their performance on the two tasks was judged by external raters to be comparable to that of the nondepressed subjects. Negative feedback lowered the expectations of both depressed and nondepressed subjects; in addition, subjects receiving positive feedback also made surprisingly lower performance evaluations for the second task. The actual performance of subjects was not affected by the feedback. These results are discussed in terms of both cognitive and interactional models of depression, and implications for the treatment of depression and for future research are presented.This research was supported by an Ontario Mental Health Foundation Research Grant to the second author. A version of this article was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Psychological Association, Montreal, 1982.     

Impaired selection of relevant positive information in depression

Background: A hallmark characteristic of depression is the inability to regulate the effect of emotional material on cognition. Previous research has demonstrated that depressed individuals are less able than are nondepressed persons to expel irrelevant negative information from working memory (WM), thereby exacerbating the effects of negative content on cognition. The primary goal of this study was to examine whether depressed individuals are also impaired at selecting relevant positive content in the context of representations competing for resources in WM; such an impairment would limit depressed persons' ability to use positive material to ameliorate the cognitive effects of negative information. Methods: We administered a Recency‐probes task with neutral, positive, and negative words to 20 currently depressed and 22 never‐depressed participants. This task assesses the selection of relevant content in WM by inducing interference between current and prior representations of a stimulus in WM. Reaction times to interference and noninterference trials were compared across valence and group to assess how effectively depressed individuals select task‐relevant emotional content to resolve interference. Results: Compared to never‐depressed controls, depressed individuals were impaired in selecting task‐relevant positive stimuli; the performance of the two groups was comparable for selecting task‐relevant neutral and negative stimuli. Conclusions: Findings indicate that a valence‐specific deficit in WM may contribute to the inability of depressed individuals to regulate emotion, and provide empirical support for formulations that implicate positive insensitivity in the maintenance of depression. Depression and Anxiety, 2009. Published 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.