Gilboa-Schechtman Eva, Erhard-Weiss Dana, Jeczemien Pablo
Psychology Department Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 52900, Israel.
Psychiatry Res. 2002 Dec 30;113(3):279-93. doi: 10.1016/s0165-1781(02)00266-4.
Memory biases for negatively vs. positively valenced linguistic information in depression are well documented. However, no study so far has examined the relationship between depression and memory for facial expressions. We examined memory for neutral, happy, sad, and angry facial expressions in individuals suffering from comorbid depression and anxiety (COMs, N=23) or from anxiety disorders (ANXs, N=20) and in normal controls (NACs, N=23). Two main hypotheses were examined. First, we expected COMs, but not NACs, to exhibit an enhanced memory for sad and angry vs. happy expressions (negativity hypothesis). Second, we postulated that this bias would be specific to depression (disorder-specificity hypothesis). Data supported both these hypotheses. Specifically, COMs exhibited enhanced recognition of angry compared to happy expressions; in contrast, ANXs and NACs did not exhibit such enhancement. We also found that men showed a significantly better memory for angry vs. sad expressions, whereas women did not exhibit such a difference. The implications of these findings for the interpersonal processes involved in the maintenance of depression and anxiety are discussed.
抑郁症患者对负性与正性语言信息的记忆偏差已有充分记录。然而，迄今为止尚无研究考察抑郁症与面部表情记忆之间的关系。我们研究了共病抑郁和焦虑的个体（COM组，N = 23）、患有焦虑症的个体（ANX组，N = 20）以及正常对照组（NAC组，N = 23）对中性、快乐、悲伤和愤怒面部表情的记忆。我们检验了两个主要假设。首先，我们预期COM组而非NAC组对悲伤和愤怒表情相对于快乐表情表现出增强的记忆（负性假设）。其次，我们假定这种偏差是抑郁症特有的（疾病特异性假设）。数据支持了这两个假设。具体而言，与快乐表情相比，COM组对愤怒表情的识别增强；相比之下，ANX组和NAC组未表现出这种增强。我们还发现，男性对愤怒表情相对于悲伤表情的记忆明显更好，而女性则未表现出这种差异。我们讨论了这些发现对抑郁和焦虑维持过程中人际过程的影响。
