Processing of emotional information in seasonal depression across different cognitive measures.
This study examined memory for emotional material, endorsement of emotional adjectives, and negative attributional style (NAS) in seasonal affective disorder (SAD). SAD patients showed elevated NAS and increased endorsement of negative self-referent adjectives, but no memory bias for negative material, when compared with never-depressed controls. Longitudinal analyses revealed that none of these cognitive measures significantly predicted later symptom levels independent of initial symptom levels, in the SAD patients. The cross-sectional findings for adjective endorsement and memory were replicated in a second experiment. These data provide further evidence that depression-related memory effects in SAD are different from those found in nonseasonal depression. Accounts of these differences involving putative mood-repair processes and/or an absence of dysfunctional negative schemas in SAD are discussed.
Emotion Research Group, Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge, United Kingdom. tim.dalgleish@mrccbu.cam.ac.uk
Tim
T
Dalgleish
Helen
H
Spinks
Ann-Marie
AM
Golden
Pieter
P
du Toit
D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D003071:Cognition; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D016574:Seasonal Affective Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology*; D012720:Severity of Illness Index