Specificity of Future Thinking in Depression: A Meta-Analysis

Gamble, Beau; Moreau, David; Tippett, Lynette J.; Addis, Donna Rose

doi:10.1177/1745691619851784

Cited by 71 publications

(59 citation statements)

References 91 publications

(167 reference statements)

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“…These results suggest that the observer perspective bias may be a bias that is not specific to autobiographical memory but relevant to other types of autobiographical thinking. This echoes other cognitive biases that are present for memory and imagined future events such as reduced autobiographical specificity (Gamble et al, 2019;Hallford et al, 2020b;Sumner et al, 2010;Williams et al, 2007). Interestingly, we found different measures of depressive symptoms were associated with different temporalities of visual perspective.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 80%

“…Furthermore, imagined future events are phenomenologically different as they are less vivid, less relevant to identity and life story, and more positive than autobiographical memories (Berntsen & Bohn, 2010;McDermott et al, 2016). Individuals with depression and high depressive symptoms have reductions in future autobiographical specificity in comparison to non-depressed participants (Gamble et al, 2019;Hallford et al, 2018), but very few studies have investigated the relationship between visual perspective for imagined autobiographical events and depression. Such research is important as it can clarify whether the observer bias is a general cognitive bias for all episodic thinking or whether it relates to past memories alone.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Links between depressive symptoms and the observer perspective for autobiographical memories and imagined events: a high familial risk study

Warne

Rice

2021

Journal of Cognitive Psychology

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Depression is associated with increased observer visual perspective for positive autobiographical memories. However, it is unclear if this relationship (1) is present in individuals at high familial risk of depression; (2) is a general bias extending to future imagined events; and (3) is independent of general cognition and other cognitive biases. We examined the association of observer perspective, valence (positive, negative, neutral) and temporality (memories, future imagined events) with depressive symptoms in 29 young adults at high familial risk for depression. Increased observer perspective for memories was associated with dimensional depressive symptoms controlling for IQ and autobiographical specificity. There was weak evidence that increased observer perspective for future events was associated with a diagnostic measure of depressive symptoms, but limited evidence that perspective by valence interactions were associated with depressive symptoms. Results indicate depressive symptoms are associated with an observer perspective bias in autobiographical thinking regardless of temporality or valence.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 80%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Links between depressive symptoms and the observer perspective for autobiographical memories and imagined events: a high familial risk study

Warne

Rice

2021

Journal of Cognitive Psychology

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“…For example, patients with depression show deficits in retrieving concrete, specific details of positive episodic memories (Williams & Scott 1988). These patients also show deficits in updating negative abstract representations from new, concrete instances to the contrary (Korn et al 2014), and in producing vivid prospections about future positive events (Gamble et al 2019). These patients have access to abstract knowledge, but without concrete details, they are stymied in their attempts to simulate successfully.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Above and beyond the concrete: The diverse representational substrates of the predictive brain

Gilead¹,

Trope²,

Liberman³

2019

Behav Brain Sci

116

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Abstract In recent years, scientists have increasingly taken to investigate the predictive nature of cognition. We argue that prediction relies on abstraction, and thus theories of predictive cognition need an explicit theory of abstract representation. We propose such a theory of the abstract representational capacities that allow humans to transcend the “here-and-now.” Consistent with the predictive cognition literature, we suggest that the representational substrates of the mind are built as a hierarchy, ranging from the concrete to the abstract; however, we argue that there are qualitative differences between elements along this hierarchy, generating meaningful, often unacknowledged, diversity. Echoing views from philosophy, we suggest that the representational hierarchy can be parsed into: modality-specific representations, instantiated on perceptual similarity; multimodal representations, instantiated primarily on the discovery of spatiotemporal contiguity; and categorical representations, instantiated primarily on social interaction. These elements serve as the building blocks of complex structures discussed in cognitive psychology (e.g., episodes, scripts) and are the inputs for mental representations that behave like functions, typically discussed in linguistics (i.e., predicators). We support our argument for representational diversity by explaining how the elements in our ontology are all required to account for humans’ predictive cognition (e.g., in subserving logic-based prediction; in optimizing the trade-off between accurate and detailed predictions) and by examining how the neuroscientific evidence coheres with our account. In doing so, we provide a testable model of the neural bases of conceptual cognition and highlight several important implications to research on self-projection, reinforcement learning, and predictive-processing models of psychopathology.

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“…Thus, it would be of interest to evaluate whether future thinking in depression would activate lower emotional and higher neutral facial expressions. It would be also of interest to evaluate whether these neutral facial expressions may mirror the overgenerality of future thinking in depression, that is, the tendency of patients with depression to imagine general rather than specific future scenarios (Gamble et al, 2019). Because this overgenerality has been intimately associated with avoidance strategies (Williams, 2006), increased neutral and decreased emotional facial expressions may mirror these strategies during future thinking in depression.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The face of future: Face expressions during future thinking

Haj

Altıntaş

Moustafa

et al. 2021

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

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Future thinking, which is the ability to project oneself forward in time to pre-experience an event, is intimately associated with emotions. We investigated whether emotional future thinking can activate emotional facial expressions. We invited 43 participants to imagine future scenarios, cued by the words “happy”, “sad”, and “city”. Future thinking was video recoded and analyzed with a facial analysis software to classify whether facial expressions (i.e., happy, sad, angry, surprised, scared, disgusted, and neutral facial expression) of participants were neutral or emotional. Analysis demonstrated higher levels of happy facial expressions during future thinking cued by the word “happy” than “sad” or “city”. In contrast, higher levels of sad facial expressions were observed during future thinking cued by the word “sad” than “happy” or “city”. Higher levels of neutral facial expressions were observed during future thinking cued by the word “city” than “happy” or “sad”. In the three conditions, the neutral expressions were high compared to happy and sad facial expression. Together, emotional future thinking, at least for future scenarios cued by “happy” and “sad”, seems to trigger the corresponding facial expression. Our study provides an original physiological window into the subjective emotional experience during future thinking.

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Specificity of Future Thinking in Depression: A Meta-Analysis

Cited by 71 publications

References 91 publications

Links between depressive symptoms and the observer perspective for autobiographical memories and imagined events: a high familial risk study

Links between depressive symptoms and the observer perspective for autobiographical memories and imagined events: a high familial risk study

Above and beyond the concrete: The diverse representational substrates of the predictive brain

The face of future: Face expressions during future thinking

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