Emerging depression is associated with face memory deficits in adolescent girls.
OBJECTIVE
To examine the association between memory for previously encoded emotional faces and depression symptoms assessed over 4 years in adolescent girls. Investigating the interface between memory deficits and depression in adolescent girls may provide clues about depression pathophysiology.


METHODS
Participants were 213 girls recruited from a longitudinal, community-based study; the majority were African American. Scores on depressive screening measures at age 8 were used to increase the base rate of depression. Depression symptoms and diagnoses were assessed annually for 4 years. In year 4, when the girls were 12 to 13 years old, a face emotion encoding task was administered during which ratings were generated in response to sad, fearful, angry, and happy faces. A surprise memory task followed whereby participants identified which of two faces, displaying neutral expressions, they had seen previously.


RESULTS
Girls with higher depression symptom levels from ages 9 to 12 years evidenced lower accuracy in identifying previously encoded emotional faces. Controlling for IQ, higher depression symptom level was associated with a memory deficit specific to previously encoded sad and happy faces. These effects were not moderated by race.


CONCLUSIONS
Individual differences in face memory deficits relate to individual differences in emerging, early adolescent depression, and may be vulnerability markers for depression.
Department of Human and Community Development, Center for Mind and Brain, University of California-Davis, 267 Cousteau Place, Davis, CA 95618, USA. aeguyer@ucdavis.edu
Amanda E
AE
Guyer
Victoria R
VR
Choate
Kevin J
KJ
Grimm
Daniel S
DS
Pine
Kate
K
Keenan
D000293:Adolescent; D001741:Black or African American / Q000523:psychology*; D002648:Child; D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000208:ethnology*; D004644:Emotions; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008569:Memory Disorders / Q000208:ethnology*; D010414:Pennsylvania / Q000453:epidemiology; D011627:Puberty / Q000523:psychology; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D012044:Regression Analysis; D044465:White People
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