Children of parents with a history of depression have an increased risk of developing depression themselves. The present study investigated the role of interpretation biases (that have been found in adults and adolescents with depression but have rarely been examined in at-risk youth) in the transgenerational transmission of depression risk. Interpretation biases were assessed with two experimental tasks: Ambiguous Scenarios Task (AST) and Scrambled Sentences Task (SST) in 9 -14-year-old children of parents with a history of depression (high risk; n ϭ 43) in comparison to children of parents with no history of mental disorders (low risk; n ϭ 35). Interpretation biases were also compared between the two groups of parents and relationships between children's and parents' bias scores were examined. As expected, we found more negative interpretation biases in high-risk children compared to low-risk children as well as in parents with a history of depression compared to never-depressed parents (assessed via the SST but not the AST). However, transgenerational correlations were only found for the AST. Our results indicate that negative interpretation biases are present in youth at risk for depression, possibly representing a cognitive vulnerability for the development of depression. Moreover, different measures of interpretation bias seemed to capture different aspects of biased processing with the more implicit measure (SST) being a more valid indicator of depressive processing.

Lack of self-compassion and deficits in emotion regulation are associated with various psychopathological symptoms and may play a role in the development and maintenance of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). However, further empirical research is still needed to better understand these constructs in the context of this disorder. The present study investigated the relation between self-compassion, emotion regulation difficulties, obsessive beliefs, and obsessive-compulsive symptom severity in 90 patients with OCD using self-report questionnaires. Symptom severity and obsessive beliefs were negatively correlated to self-compassion and positively associated with emotion regulation difficulties. Additionally, self-compassion showed a negative relation to emotion regulation difficulties. Emotion regulation difficulties-but not selfcompassion-predicted symptom severity when controlling for obsessive beliefs and depression in a hierarchical regression analysis. Further analyses showed that emotion regulation deficits mediated the relationship between self-compassion and OCD symptom severity. Our results provide preliminary evidence that targeting self-compassion and putting more emphasis on emotion regulation deficits might be promising treatment approaches for patients with OCD. Future studies could investigate which specific interventions that directly address these variables improve treatment outcome.

Negative interpretation biases have been found to characterize adults with depression and to be involved in the development and maintenance of the disorder. However, less is known about their role in youth depression. The present study investigated i) whether negative interpretation biases characterize children and adolescents with depression and ii) to what extent these biases are more pronounced in currently depressed youth compared to youth at risk for depression (as some negative interpretation biases have been found already in high-risk youth before disorder onset). After a negative mood induction interpretation biases were assessed with two experimental tasks: Ambiguous Scenarios Task (AST) and Scrambled Sentences Task (SST) in three groups of 9–14-year-olds: children and adolescents with a diagnosis of major depression ( n = 32), children and adolescents with a high risk for depression (children of depressed parents; n = 48), as well as low-risk children and adolescents ( n = 42). Depressed youth exhibited substantially more negative interpretation biases than both high-risk and low-risk groups (as assessed with both tasks), while the high-risk group showed more negative interpretation biases than the low-risk group only as assessed via the SST. The results indicate that the negative interpretation biases that are to some extent already present in high-risk populations before disorder onset are strongly amplified in currently depressed youth. The different findings for the two tasks suggest that more implicit interpretation biases (assessed with the SST) might represent cognitive vulnerabilities for depression whereas more explicit interpretation biases (assessed with the AST) may arise as a consequence of depressive symptomatology. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1007/s10802-020-00670-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Attention biases (AB) are a core component of cognitive models of depression yet it is unclear what role they play in the transgenerational transmission of depression. 44 children (9–14 years) with a high familial risk of depression (HR) were compared on multiple measures of AB with 36 children with a low familial risk of depression (LR). Their parents: 44 adults with a history of depression (HD) and 36 adults with no history of psychiatric disorder (ND) were also compared. There was no evidence of group differences in AB; neither between the HR and LR children, nor between HD and ND parents. There was no evidence of a correlation between parent and child AB. The internal consistency of the tasks varied greatly. The Dot-Probe Task showed unacceptable reliability whereas the behavioral index of the Visual-Search Task and an eye-tracking index of the Passive-Viewing Task showed better reliability. There was little correlation between the AB tasks and the tasks showed minimal convergence with symptoms of depression or anxiety. The null-findings of the current study contradict our expectations and much of the previous literature. They may be due to the poor psychometric properties associated with some of the AB indices, the unreliability of AB in general, or the relatively modest sample size. The poor reliability of the tasks in our sample suggest caution should be taken when interpreting the positive findings of previous studies which have used similar methods and populations.

Background: While exposure and response prevention (ERP) is the most effective treatment for obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), less is known about the specific mechanisms underlying symptom change after ERP. Aims: We tested the hypothesis that the frequency of self- and therapist-guided ERP related to the extent of symptom reduction and that this link is mediated by increased self-efficacy. Method: In a sample of 377 in-patients with a primary diagnosis of OCD receiving in-patient CBT, we assessed symptoms (YBOCS-SR) and self-efficacy (General Self-Efficacy Scale), before and after treatment, as well as the frequency of therapist- and self-guided ERP sessions. Results: Patients with more therapist-guided ERP sessions during treatment showed more symptom reduction and the association of self-guided ERP on outcome was mediated by enhanced self-efficacy. Conclusions: These findings highlight the importance of both therapist- and self-guided ERP sessions and suggest that therapists should conduct a sufficient number of ERP sessions to optimise treatment.