Abstract
Researchers have documented that children of depressed mothers are at elevated risk for developing a depressive disorder themselves. There is currently little understanding, however, of what factors place these children at elevated risk. In the present study, the authors investigated whether never-disordered daughters whose mothers have experienced recurrent episodes of depression during their daughters' lifetime are characterized by biased processing of emotional information. Following a negative mood induction, participants completed an emotional-faces dot-probe task. Daughters at elevated risk for depression, but not control daughters of never-disordered mothers, selectively attended to negative facial expressions. In contrast, only control daughters selectively attended to positive facial expressions. These results provide support for cognitive vulnerability models of depression.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 135-143 |
Number of pages | 9 |
Journal | Journal of abnormal psychology |
Volume | 116 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Feb 2007 |
Keywords
- Attention
- Bias
- Biased emotional information processing
- Children
- Depression
- Elevated risk
- Emotional facial expressions
- Maternal depression
- Vulnerability
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Clinical Psychology
- Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
- Psychology(all)