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Disentangling the Interplay Among Cognitive Biases: Evidence of Combined Effects of Attention, Interpretation and Autobiographical Memory in Depression

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Abstract

Previous research has found that cognitive biases in attention, interpretation, and memory play an important role in depression. However, there is little knowledge of the interplay between these biases in clinical depression. The present study was aimed to model different pathways of relation among attention, interpretation and autobiographical memory biases, and to examine their contribution to account for depression status outcomes. Cognitive biases were evaluated in a sample comprising 22 currently-depressed and 36 never-depressed individuals representing a broad range of depression severity levels. Cognitive biases were assessed by three separate tasks using different types of stimuli. Our main finding was a significant indirect effect model in which attention bias to negative faces was linked to greater negative memory bias via its association with negative interpretation bias. Within this model, the specific pathway between attention bias to negative faces and negative interpretation bias accounted both for significant variance in depression severity as well as for depression diagnostic status. These findings increase our understanding of the complex interplay between cognitive mechanisms involved in clinical depression and highlight hypothetical pathways relevant for future interventions.

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Notes

  1. We explored this possibility in our study by testing an integrative model comprising the pathway attention to happy faces ⟶ attention to sad faces ⟶ interpretation ⟶ memory. These exploratory analyses supported an indirect effect in which attention bias to positive information influenced negative memory bias by its influence on attention bias to negative information and the influence of attention bias to negative information in negative interpretation bias. Moreover this integrative explanatory model also contributed significantly to the prediction of depression status outcomes in the study. This set of explanatory analyses is available upon request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was partially supported by a Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation grants, PSI2015-69253-R and PSI2014-61764-EXP to CV, and by grants BES-2010-030840 to AD and AP2007-01141 to NR. We are very grateful to Jonas Everaert for his assistance and comments on earlier versions of the manuscript and to Matt Abrams, Miriam Mower and Jessica Carney for their help in editing the manuscript.

Author’s Contributions

CV and AD developed the study concept. All authors contributed to the study design. Testing and data collection were performed by AD and NR. Data analyses were performed and interpretation was performed by AS under the supervision of CV. All authors drafted the paper and approved the final version for submission.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Clinical Psychology, School of Psychology, Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Alvaro Sanchez, Almudena Duque, Nuria Romero & Carmelo Vazquez

  2. Department of Experimental Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Alvaro Sanchez & Nuria Romero

  3. Department of Psychology, Pontifical University of Salamanca, 37002, Salamanca, Spain

    Almudena Duque

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  1. Alvaro Sanchez
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  2. Almudena Duque
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  3. Nuria Romero
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  4. Carmelo Vazquez
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Correspondence to Almudena Duque.

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Alvaro Sanchez, Almudena Duque, Nuria Romero, Carmelo Vazquez declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all participants included in the study.

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No animal studies were carried out by the authors for this article.

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Sanchez, A., Duque, A., Romero, N. et al. Disentangling the Interplay Among Cognitive Biases: Evidence of Combined Effects of Attention, Interpretation and Autobiographical Memory in Depression. Cogn Ther Res 41, 829–841 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-017-9858-5

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