Attentional Disengagement Deficits Predict Brooding, but Not Reflection, Over a One-Year Period

Abstract

A growing literature suggests that rumination is linked to attentional disengagement deficits in depression. This is particularly the case with brooding, a maladaptive form of rumination. However, research on the potential constructive association between attentional disengagement and self-reflection, a putative adaptive form of rumination, is sparse. Thus, the goal of the present study was to examine whether visual attentional disengagement deficits differentially predict dispositional brooding and self-reflection tendencies. Depressed participants (n = 17), those in remission from depression (n = 42), and their peers with no depression histories (n = 70) completed clinical interviews, the Ruminative Response Scale (RRS), and an eye-tracking task that measured attentional disengagement from pleasant (happy) and unpleasant (sad) facial images during a laboratory visit, and the RRS at 4 month intervals over a 1-year period. Results revealed that slow disengagement from sad faces, and rapid disengagement from happy faces, was specifically associated with brooding tendencies concurrently and across follow-up. Attentional disengagement was unrelated to self-reflection. The disengagement-brooding associations remained after controlling for depression status and anxiety disorder histories, suggesting that attentional control deficits may be a state-independent marker of brooding. Theoretical and clinical implications for these associations are discussed.

The Age-Related Positivity Effect and Emotion Regulation: Assessing Downstream Affective Outcomes

“…Next, participants completed a 5-point calibration procedure in order to ensure that the eye tracker was accurately recording gaze position to various portions of the stressor film clip. Participants then completed an unrelated image-viewing task that was part of a larger study on attentional engagement and disengagement to static facial expressions (see Allard & Yaroslavsky, 2019; Yaroslavsky et al, 2019). After the image-viewing task, participants provided a baseline affect rating that was followed by the film clip stressor.…”

Free-viewing gaze patterns reveal a mood-congruency bias in MDD during an affective fMRI/eye-tracking task

“…Previous work has shown differences in gaze behavior in MDD patients in related affective tasks such as the dot-probe task [30], attention disengagement [31], attention control [32], or mood induction [33]. In particular, two related metaanalyses have demonstrated that MDD patients compared to HC show moderate to large increases in the maintenance of gaze on dysphoric information (primarily face stimuli) and decreases in the maintenance of positive valence, reflecting what is referred to as "a mood-congruency bias" [34,35].…”

State and Trait Rumination Effects on Overt Attention to Reminders of Errors in a Challenging General Knowledge Retrieval Task

“…Similarly, Owens and Gibb (2017) found that greater brooding-like ruminative tendencies within a mentally healthy adult sample predicted increased dwell time on sad vs. happy faces. Interestingly, a recent eye-tracking study found that individuals who exhibited stable trait Brooding both at the time of study and over the course of the following year not only were slower to disengage attentional focus away from negative information but also were slower to engage attention with more positive stimuli ( Allard and Yaroslavsky, 2019 ).…”