Attentional bias temporal dynamics in remitted depression.

Abstract

Theory implicates attentional bias (AB) or dysregulated attentional processing of emotional information in the recurrence of major depressive episodes. However, empirical study of AB among remitted depressed patients is limited in scope and has yielded mixed findings. Mixed findings may be accounted for by how the field has conceptualized and thereby studied AB. We propose that a novel temporal dynamic process perspective on AB may help disambiguate extant findings and elucidate the nature of AB in remitted depression. Thus, we reexamined Dot Probe data among remitted depressed patients (RMD; n ϭ 328) and nondepressed controls (NDC; n ϭ 82) that previously yielded null effects when AB was quantified by means of the traditional aggregated mean bias score (Vrijsen et al., 2014). We reanalyzed data using a novel computational approach that extracts a series of bias estimations from trial to trial (Zvielli, Bernstein, & Koster, 2015). Key features of these dynamic process signals revealed moderate to excellent reliability relative to the traditional aggregated mean bias scores. These features of AB dynamics-specifically temporal variability in AB including AB toward and away from emotional stimuli-were significantly elevated among RMDs relative to NDCs. Moreover, among RMDs, a greater number of past depressive episodes were associated with elevation in these features of AB dynamics. Effects were not accounted for by residual depressive symptoms or social anxiety symptoms. Findings indicate that dysregulation in attentional processing of emotional information reflected in AB dynamics may be key to depression vulnerability.

Capturing Dynamics of Biased Attention: Are New Attention Variability Measures the Way Forward?

“…Given our findings, we feel that it is very worrisome that dynamic bias measures are being used as if they are already fully developed and validated, bypassing the question of what it is that they measure. They are being implemented at a rapid speed, thereby propagating the idea that these methods provide valid and reliable indices of attention bias, suitable for use in clinical samples [23,26–28] and as a target outcome for treatment [29–32]. We strongly caution against this development as much more basic science is required, while skirting this stage will likely lead to considerable waste of time and money.…”

Attentional Bias Modification is associated with fMRI Response towards Negative Stimuli in Residual Depression: A Randomized Controlled Trial

“…4 Despite mixed findings, clinically depressed subjects, as well as currently euthymic previously depressed subjects, have repeatedly been reported to orient their attention toward negative faces rather than neutral or positive faces. [5][6][7][8][9][10] Attentional biases (AB) and deficits in cognitive control may interfere with emotion regulation and mood state.…”

Association between negative cognitive bias and depression: A symptom-level approach

“…Dot-probe metrics. Attention bias using reaction time data was operationalized according to standard conventions (Mogg, Holmes, Garner, & Bradley, 2008) as well as the more recently developed trial level bias scores (TLBS; Zvielli, Vrijsen, Koster, & Bernstein, 2016) using an R package developed in our lab called itrak (https://github.com/jashu/itrak). Prior to creating bias scores, we first excluded incorrect responses, responses that were faster than 200ms, longer than 1500ms, or were 3 median absolute deviations beyond the individual's median.…”

“…Positive scores are interpreted as an attention bias directed towards negative stimuli, whereas negative scores indicate a bias away from negative stimuli. However, Zvielli et al (2016) proposed that attention bias is dynamic and fluctuates over time, so using overall mean reaction time to congruent and incongruent trials may miss important information. Rather than using bias scores that are averaged across all trials, they developed TLBS that create difference scores between congruent and incongruent trials that are within close temporal proximity to each other (e.g., within 5 trials of each other).…”