Abstract
The role of negative attention biases (AB), central to cognitive models of adult depression, is yet unclear in youth depression. We investigated negative AB in depressed compared to healthy youth and tested whether AB are more pronounced in depressed than at-risk youth. Negative AB was assessed for sad and angry faces with an eye-tracking paradigm [Passive Viewing Task (PVT)] and a behavioural task [Visual Search Task (VST)], comparing three groups of 9–14-year-olds: youth with major depression (MD; n = 32), youth with depressed parents (high-risk; HR; n = 49) and youth with healthy parents (low-risk; LR; n = 42). The PVT revealed MD participants to maintain attention longer on sad faces compared to HR, but not LR participants. This AB correlated positively with depressive symptoms. The VST revealed no group differences. Our results provide preliminary evidence for a negative AB in maintenance of attention on disorder-specific emotional information in depressed compared to at-risk youth.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 189–201 |
Number of pages | 13 |
Journal | Child Psychiatry and Human Development |
Volume | 54 |
Issue number | 1 |
Early online date | 2 Sept 2021 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Feb 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL. This study was funded by "Förderprogramm für Forschung und Lehre" (FöFoLe, grant number 895) of the Medical Faculty of the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich and the Hans und Klementia Langmatz Stiftung.
Funding Information:
We would like to thank all participants for their support! Furthermore, we thank Petra Wagenbüchler, Sonja Stolp and team for their help with participant recruitment and Petra Wagenbüchler, Veronika Jäger, Lisa Ordenewitz, Jakob Neumüller, Laura Asperud Thomsen, Moritz Dannert and Ann-Sophie Störmann for their help with data collection.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, The Author(s).
Funding
Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL. This study was funded by "Förderprogramm für Forschung und Lehre" (FöFoLe, grant number 895) of the Medical Faculty of the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich and the Hans und Klementia Langmatz Stiftung.
Funders | Funder number |
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Hans und Klementia Langmatz Stiftung | |
Medical Faculty of the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich | |
Petra Wagenbüchler | |
Sonja Stolp |
Keywords
- Attention bias
- Eye-tracking
- Risk for depression
- Youth depression