Short-term memory for emotional faces in dysphoria

Abstract

The study aimed to determine if the memory bias for negative faces previously demonstrated in depression and dysphoria generalises from long- to short-term memory. A total of 29 dysphoric (DP) and 22 non-dysphoric (ND) participants were presented with a series of faces and asked to identify the emotion portrayed (happiness, sadness, anger, or neutral affect). Following a delay, four faces were presented (the original plus three distractors) and participants were asked to identify the target face. Half of the trials assessed memory for facial emotion, and the remaining trials examined memory for facial identity. At encoding, no group differences were apparent. At memory testing, relative to ND participants, DP participants exhibited impaired memory for all types of facial emotion and for facial identity when the faces featured happiness, anger, or neutral affect, but not sadness. DP participants exhibited impaired identity memory for happy faces relative to angry, sad, and neutral, whereas ND participants exhibited enhanced facial identity memory when faces were angry. In general, memory for faces was not related to performance at encoding. However, in DP participants only, memory for sad faces was related to sadness recognition at encoding. The results suggest that the negative memory bias for faces in dysphoria does not generalise from long- to short-term memory.

Investigating the mediating effect of working memory on intentional forgetting in dysphoria

“…The prediction that dysphoric participants would exhibit poorer working memory (lower OSPAN scores) in comparison to the non-dysphoric group was not supported by our data. This is not consistent with the findings of previous studies (Christopher & McDonalds, 2005;Hubbard et al, 2016, Joormann & Gotlib, 2008Noreen & Ridout, 2010;Rose & Ebmeier 2006). One possible explanation concerns the participant sample used in the different studies.…”

Sad benefit in face working memory: An emotional bias of melancholic depression

“…The absence of a clear sad benefit in dysphoria in other previous work (Noreen and Ridout, 2010) may be explained by the characteristics of the sample of that study, which included only healthy individuals who scored high on a depression scale. Deveney and Deldin (2004) did investigate patients with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and did not find a bias for sad faces in working memory, but they used a load of only one face.…”

Do you remember your sad face? The roles of negative cognitive style and sad mood

“…We showed that individuals high in negative cognitive style, when distressed, show a bias towards the negative self-face (with respect to the negative nonself face), even within brief short-term memory episodes. Conversely, we found no evidence of a ''sad benefit'' during WM processing (see also Noreen & Ridout, 2010).…”

“…A long-term memory bias for sad faces has been found in patients with depression (Gilboa-Schechtman, Erhard-Weiss, & Jeczemien, 2002;Ridout, Astell, Reid, Glen, & O'Carroll, 2003), in individuals experiencing dysphoria (Jermann et al, 2008;Ridout, Noreen, & Johal, 2009), and in individuals in an induced sad mood (Ridout, Dritschel, et al, 2009). A short-term memory bias for sad faces has been found in patients with melancholic depression (Linden, Jackson, Subramanian, Healy, & Linden, 2011), but not in individuals with subclinical dysphoria (Noreen & Ridout, 2010). The results of these studies show abnormal recognition memory for faces displaying sadness in depressed and depression-susceptible groups, or after an experimentally induced sad mood.…”