Decoding Basic and Non-basic Facial Expressions and Depressive Symptoms in Late Childhood and Adolescence

Beek, Yolanda van; Dubas, Judith Semon

doi:10.1007/s10919-007-0041-7

Cited by 36 publications

(24 citation statements)

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“…Attention biases toward strangers’ negative facial expressions have been found in youth with elevated anxiety and anxiety disorders (Roy et al, 2008) and daughters of depressed mothers (Joormann, Talbot, & Gotlib, 2007). Negatively biased interpretations of the intensity of others’ emotions have also been linked to depression; studies have shown that depressed youth interpret low-intensity angry faces as more intensely angry than children with low depression (van Beek & Dubas, 2008) and sons of depressed mothers identify sad facial expressions at lower intensities than low-risk children (Lopez-Duran, Kuhlman, George, & Kovacs, 2013). Children’s misattributions of personal responsibility for others’ negative emotions have also been linked to internalizing problems.…”

Section: Emotion Processing Risks For Internalizing Problems In Childrenmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Moreover, non-depressed children and adolescents have been found to misclassify negative facial expressions as happy (Jenness, Hankin, Young, & Gibb, 2015; Schepman, Taylor, Collishaw, & Fombonne, 2012). On the other hand, depressed adolescents interpreted low-intensity happy faces as less intensely happy than adolescents with low depression (van Beek & Dubas, 2008). Depressed youth have also been found to have greater impairments in recalling positive information, including fewer positive personal memories, than non-depressed children (Drummond, Dritschel, Astell, O’Carroll, & Dalgleish, 2006; Whitman & Leitenberg, 1990), and among depressed adults, greater recall of self-referential positive words uniquely predicted a decrease in symptoms nine months later (Johnson, Joormann, & Gotlib, 2007).…”

Section: Emotion Processing Risks For Internalizing Problems In Childrenmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Positively biased processing of mother's emotions predicts children's social and emotional functioning

Donohue

Goodman

Tully

2017

Early Childhood Research Quarterly

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Risk for internalizing problems and social skills deficits likely emerges in early childhood when emotion processing and social competencies are developing. Positively biased processing of social information is typical during early childhood and may be protective against poorer psychosocial outcomes. We tested the hypothesis that young children with relatively less positively biased attention to, interpretations of, and attributions for their mother’s emotions would exhibit poorer prosocial skills and more internalizing problems. A sample of 4- to 6-year-old children (N=82) observed their mothers express happiness, sadness and anger during a simulated emotional phone conversation. Children’s attention to their mother when she expressed each emotion was rated from video. Immediately following the phone conversation, children were asked questions about the conversation to assess their interpretations of the intensity of mother’s emotions and misattributions of personal responsibility for her emotions. Children’s prosocial skills and internalizing problems were assessed using mother-report rating scales. Interpretations of mother’s positive emotions as relatively less intense than her negative emotions, misattributions of personal responsibility for her negative emotions, and lack of misattributions of personal responsibility for her positive emotions were associated with poorer prosocial skills. Children who attended relatively less to mother’s positive than her negative emotions had higher levels of internalizing problems. These findings suggest that children’s attention to, interpretations of, and attributions for their mother’s emotions may be important targets of early interventions for preventing prosocial skills deficits and internalizing problems.

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Section: Emotion Processing Risks For Internalizing Problems In Childrenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Emotion Processing Risks For Internalizing Problems In Childrenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Positively biased processing of mother's emotions predicts children's social and emotional functioning

Donohue

Goodman

Tully

2017

Early Childhood Research Quarterly

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“…While there has yet to be an RMET investigation of adolescents with current MDD, other studies using nonclinical [22,23] and clinical youth samples [24,25] have examined the relation between mental state decoding and depression using stimuli depicting entire faces. Among nonclinical community participants, greater depressive symptoms were associated with poorer decoding accuracy among boys but not girls [22].…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This suggests a distinct sex-based relation between adolescent depression and mental state decoding, which may be partially attributed to neurobiological sex differences that emerge across pubertal development, in turn influencing social cognition [26]. A separate nonclinical study found depression to be associated with greater perceived intensity of anger and joy [23]. Poorer overall decoding accuracy with a bias toward negative emotion has been reported in clinically anxious-depressed youth [24]; however, adolescents with remitted MDD or dysthymia, a combined depression group, were found to exhibit similar decoding accuracy as compared to HCs [25].…”

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confidence: 99%

Mental State Decoding in Adolescent Boys with Major Depressive Disorder versus Sex-Matched Healthy Controls

Mellick

Sharp²

2016

Psychopathology

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Background: Several adult depression studies have investigated mental state decoding, the basis for theory of mind, using the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test. Findings have been mixed, but a comprehensive study found a greater severity of depression to be associated with poorer mental state decoding. Importantly, there has yet to be a similar study of adolescent depression. Converging evidence suggests that atypical mental state decoding may have particularly profound effects for psychosocial functioning among depressed adolescent boys. Sampling and Methods: Adolescent boys with major depressive disorder (MDD, n = 33) and sex-matched healthy controls (HCs, n = 84) completed structured clinical interviews, self-report measures of psychopathology and the Child Eyes Test (CET). Results: The MDD group performed significantly better than HCs on the CET overall (p = 0.002), underscored by greater accuracy for negatively valenced items (p = 0.003). Group differences on items depicting positive (p = 0.129) and neutral mental states (p = 0.081) were nonsignificant. Conclusions: Enhanced mental state decoding among depressed adolescent boys may play a role in the maintenance of and vulnerability to adolescent depression. Findings and implications are discussed. Limitations of this study include a reliance on self-report data for HC boys, as well as a lack of ‘pure' depression among the boys with MDD.

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“…At each visit, we collected clinical data and evaluations of affective stimuli using a validated and standardized set of affectively-laden pictorial stimuli. To test the relative differences in affective evaluations, we controlled for maternal self-reported affective state, given data showing that valence ratings may have varying intensity depending on the negative affect state of the individual (Joormann et al, 2010; van Beek and Dubas, 2008). Then, we compared maternal ratings of valence and arousal of positive, neutral, and negative stimuli.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Affective information processing in pregnancy and postpartum with and without major depression

Gollan

Hoxha

Getch

et al. 2013

Psychiatry Research

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Adults with clinical depression exhibit systematic errors in their recognition and interpretation of affective stimuli. This study investigated the extent to which depression and phases of pregnancy and postpartum influence affective processing of positive and negative information, and the extent to which affective information processing in pregnancy predicts depressive symptoms in postpartum. Data were collected from 80 unmedicated women, diagnosed with major depressive disorder (MDD) or with no psychiatric disorder and between ages 18 and 44 years, during 32–36 weeks of pregnancy and during 6–8 weeks postpartum. All completed a Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-IV (DSM-IV) Axis I review, symptom reports, and a computer task measuring affective information processing. Significant group differences were found in which postpartum women with major depression were less responsive to negative and reactions to negative pictorial stimuli, compared with postpartum healthy women. Also, lower ratings of the intensity and reactions to negative stimuli during pregnancy among depressed women predicted postpartum depression severity, even after controlling for depressive severity and affect ratings in pregnancy. Blunted affective reactivity to negative stimuli is a characteristic of depression that was observed among depressed women during pregnancy and postpartum in our study.

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Decoding Basic and Non-basic Facial Expressions and Depressive Symptoms in Late Childhood and Adolescence

Cited by 36 publications

References 50 publications

Positively biased processing of mother's emotions predicts children's social and emotional functioning

Positively biased processing of mother's emotions predicts children's social and emotional functioning

Mental State Decoding in Adolescent Boys with Major Depressive Disorder versus Sex-Matched Healthy Controls

Affective information processing in pregnancy and postpartum with and without major depression

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