The effects of depression tendency and social comparison on adolescent self-evaluation

Cognitive manipulation of emotional and non-emotional information in working memory of patients with depression: a rigid processing style

Introduction

Cognitive psychology is one of the important perspectives to understand depression. Compared with previous studies, recent researchers increasingly focused on the exploration of the comprehensive cognitive process of patients with depression. The cognitive operation ability of working memory is an important comprehensive cognitive process, which reflects how individuals establish representations. This is the basis for the formation of experience and schema. The purpose of this study is to explore whether there are abnormalities in cognitive manipulation in patients with depression, and to analyze its possible role in the pathogenesis and maintenance of depression.

Method

In this cross-sectional study, depressed patients was enrolled in the clinical psychology department of Beijing Chaoyang Hospital as the case group, while healthy individuals were recruited in the hospital and social meetings as the control group. Hamilton Depression Scale (HAMD)-17, Hamilton Anxiety Scale (HAMA) and rumination thinking scale (RRS) were adopted as measurement tools, and working memory operation tasks were adopted to test each subject, so as to measure their cognitive operation ability.

Result

A total of 78 depressed patients and 81 healthy individuals completed the study. The results showed that the rumination level of the case group was higher than that of the control group, and the difference was significant first; Second, in the "inconsistent" condition, the case group under different stimulus conditions when the response was significantly higher than the control group; Thirdly, the "cognitive operation consumption" value of the case group was significantly higher than that of the control group under the three stimulus conditions, among which, the operational cost value of sadness-neutral stimulus was significantly higher than that of the other two stimulus conditions.

Conclusion

Patients with depression had obvious difficulties in cognitive manipulation of information with different values in working memory, which reflected in the fact that it took them longer time to adjust the relationship between information and established new representations. Among them, patients with depression had a higher degree of cognitive manipulation of sad stimuli, indicating that their abnormal cognitive manipulation had certain emotion specificity. Finally, the difficulty of cognitive operation was closely related to the level of rumination.

Association between depression status in adolescents and cognitive performance over the subsequent six years: A longitudinal study

BACKGROUND

Adolescent depression is a common mental health problem and is sometimes associated with cognitive impairments. However, existing research regarding the association between depression status in adolescents and cognitive performance over the subsequent years is relatively paucity.

METHODS

The present study used longitudinal data from four waves (2012, 2014, 2016, and 2018) of the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) to explore the associations between adolescent depression status in 2012 and cognitive performance (measured by immediate word recall, delayed word recall, number series tests, mathematics, and vocabulary) over the subsequent years. A total of 1055 (51.72 %), 1115 (54.66 %), and 879 (43.09 %) of the 2040 adolescents identified in 2012 were followed up in 2014, 2016, and 2018, respectively.

RESULTS

We found that adolescent depression status consistently showed a negative association with cognitive performance at the measurement points over six years. The associations were retained for most cognitive outcomes after controlling for a variety of confounding factors (adolescents, parental, and family characteristics).

CONCLUSIONS

The findings of this study provide more evidence of the association between depression status in adolescents and cognitive performance. Additionally, it highlights the importance of focusing on cognitive impairment in patients with depression more broadly, especially during adolescence, a critical period for cognitive development.

Risk decision: The self-charity discrepancies in electrophysiological responses to outcome evaluation

Previous studies have examined the outcome evaluation related to the self and other, and recent research has explored the outcome evaluation of the self and other with pro-social implications. However, the evaluation processing of outcomes in the group in need remains unclear. This study has examined the neural mechanisms of evaluative processing by gambling for the self and charity, respectively. At the behavioral level, when participants make decisions for themselves, they made riskier decisions following the gain than loss in small outcomes and engage in more risky behaviors following the loss than gain in large outcomes. However, magnitude and valence did not affect the next risky behavior when participants made decisions for the charity. At the neurophysiological level, the results found that the FRN was larger for the charity outcome than for the self-outcome. For FRN, the valence difference of small outcomes was smaller than that of large outcomes. The P3 response was larger for the self-outcome than for the charity outcome. Meanwhile, compared with the small outcome, the self-charity discrepancies have a significant difference in large outcomes. In addition, the FRN amplitude for self in large outcomes was negatively correlated with the upcoming risky choices, regardless of outcome valence. The behavioral results suggest that people are more likely to optimize strategies for themselves than for the charity. The ERP findings indicated that people focus more on charity outcome than self-outcome in the early stage. In the middle and late stages, people turn attention to their outcomes, and the difference between self’s and charity’s outcome varies with the magnitude. Specifically, it is only in large outcomes that people engage more emotional attention or motivation in their outcomes, but self and charity outcomes had a similar emotional engagement in small outcomes.