Depressed individuals display biased attention for emotional information when stimuli are presented for relatively "long" (e.g., 1 second) durations. The current study examined whether attentional biases are sustained over a much longer period. Specifically, clinically depressed and never depressed young adults simultaneously viewed images from four emotion categories (sad, threat, positive, neutral) for 30 seconds while line of visual gaze was assessed. Depressed individuals spent significantly more time viewing dysphoric images and less time viewing positive images than their never depressed counterparts. Time course analyses indicated that these biases were maintained over the course of the trial. Results suggest that depressed participants' attentional biases for dysphoric information are sustained for relatively long periods even when other emotional stimuli are present. Mood congruent information-processing biases appear to be a robust feature of depression and may have an important role in the maintenance of the disorder. KeywordsCognitive bias; information processing; depression maintenance; attention; eye movements Cognitive theories of depression postulate that depressed individuals are characterized by negative biases in information processing (e.g., Beck, 1976). In general, these models propose that biases in attention, perception, and memory serve to maintain a major depressive episode. In regard to attention, depressed individuals are expected to selectively attend to negative stimuli and filter out positive stimuli. This bias, in turn, is thought to contribute to the maintenance of the disorder.Numerous studies of attentional biases in depression have been conducted. Despite initial null findings (e.g., Mogg, Bradley, Williams, & Mathews 1993;MacLeod, Mathews, & Tata, 1986), more recent work has documented an association between depression and biased attention. For instance, Gotlib et al. (2004) reported an attentional bias for sad facial expressions in a clinically depressed sample using a dot probe task (Gotlib, Krasnoperova, Yue, & Joorman, 2004). Gotlib et al. (2004) and Joormann and Gotlib (2007) subsequently replicated this finding. Caseras, Garner, Bradley, and Mogg (2007) provided further evidence that dysphoric individuals maintained their gaze longer on negative pictures than non-dysphoric people.Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Christopher G. Beevers, Department of Psychology, The University of Texas at Austin, 1 University Station, A8000, Austin, TX 78712. E-mail: beevers@psy.utexas.edu. Jennifer L. Kellough is now at the Department of Psychology, University of Southern California.Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final citable form. Please note that during the production proc...

A deletion polymorphism in the serotonin transporter-linked polymorphic region (5-HTTLPR) has been associated with vulnerability to affective disorders, yet the mechanism by which this gene confers vulnerability remains unclear. Two studies examined associations between the 5-HTTLPR polymorphism and attentional bias for emotional stimuli among non-depressed adults. Biased attention, attention engagement, and difficulty with attention disengagement were assessed with a spatial cueing task using emotional stimuli. Results from Study 1 (N = 38) indicated that short 5-HTTLPR allele carriers experienced greater difficulty disengaging their attention from sad and happy stimuli compared to long allele homozygotes. Study 2 participants (N = 144) were genotyped for the 5-HTTLPR polymorphism, including single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs25531 in the long allele of the 5-HTTLPR. Consistent with Study 1, individuals homozygous for the low expressing 5-HTTLPR alleles (i.e., S and L G ) experienced greater difficulty disengaging attention from sad, happy, and fear stimuli than high expressing 5-HTTLPR homozygotes. Since this association exists in healthy adults, it may represent a susceptibility factor for affective disorders that becomes problematic during stressful life experiences. Keywords genetic association; depression vulnerability; serotonin transporter; information processing Individuals who inherit the low expressing variant of the serotonin transporter-linked polymorphic region (5-HTTLPR) of the serotonin transporter gene (SLC6A4) and experience Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Christopher G. Beevers, Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin, 1 University Station, A8000, Austin, TX 78712. beevers@psy.utexas.edu. Publisher's Disclaimer: The following manuscript is the final accepted manuscript. It has not been subjected to the final copyediting, fact-checking, and proofreading required for formal publication. It is not the definitive, publisher-authenticated version. The American Psychological Association and its Council of Editors disclaim any responsibility or liabilities for errors or omissions of this manuscript version, any version derived from this manuscript by NIH, or other third parties. The published version is available at www.apa.org/pubs/journals/abn. NIH Public AccessAuthor Manuscript J Abnorm Psychol. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2010 August 1. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript significant life stress appear to be at greater risk for depression than people who inherit two copies of the high expressing 5-HTTLPR allele (e.g., Caspi et al., 2003;Kendler, Kuhn, Vittum, Prescott, & Riley, 2005). These landmark studies have stimulated research aimed at understanding why the low expressing 5-HTTLPR variant putatively increases sensitivity to life stress and, in turn, increases vulnerability to depression. One possibility is that the 5-HTTLPR polymorphism biases the processing of emotional information. Ther...

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Cognitive models of depression posit that biased emotional processing contributes to the maintenance of depression. Specifically, depression has been associated with biased attention and memory for emotional information; however, few studies have examined relations between these processes. In the current study, stably dysphoric (n = 23) and non-dysphoric (n = 40) participants' line of visual gaze was assessed while viewing a 2 9 2 array of emotionally valenced words. Incidental recognition of study stimuli was then assessed. Non-dysphoric individuals demonstrated an attentional bias for positive words, while dysphoric individuals lacked this bias. Further, fixation duration and time spent viewing positive stimuli mediated the association between dysphoria status and incidental recognition of positive words. Results suggest that a ''protective bias'' to focus on positive stimuli, typically observed among non-dysphoric individuals, is absent in dysphoria.

This study examined whether dysphoria influences the identification of non-ambiguous and ambiguous facial expressions of emotion. Dysphoric and non-dysphoric college students viewed a series of human faces expressing sadness, happiness, anger, and fear that were morphed with each other to varying degrees. Dysphoric and non-dysphoric individuals identified prototypical emotional expressions similarly. However, when viewing ambiguous faces, dysphoric individuals were more likely to identify sadness when mixed with happiness than non-dysphoric individuals. A similar but less robust pattern was observed for facial expressions that combined fear and happiness. No group differences in emotion identification were observed for faces that combined sadness and anger or fear and anger. Dysphoria appears to enhance the identification of negative emotion in others when positive emotion is also present. This tendency may contribute to some of the interpersonal difficulties often experienced by dysphoric individuals.