Harrison Ashley Johnson, Gibb Brandon E
a Department of Psychology , Binghamton University (SUNY).
b Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior , Brown University Medical School.
J Clin Child Adolesc Psychol. 2015;44(6):1008-14. doi: 10.1080/15374416.2014.930688. Epub 2014 Jul 10.
Cognitive theories state attentional biases contribute to the development and maintenance of depression. Like depressed adults, there is growing evidence for the presence of attentional biases to sad stimuli in depressed youth. Although the direction of this bias among children remains unclear, preliminary evidence indicates attentional avoidance of sad stimuli in children. This is the first known sudy to use eye-tracking to investigate the exact nature of attention biases among depressed children. To assess sustained attention, the current study used eye-tracking and a passive viewing task in which children viewed a series of four facial expressions (angry, happy, sad, neutral) presented simultatiously for 20 s on a computer screen. The current study compared the attentional allocation of currently depressed children (n = 19; M age = 11.21) to a group of never depressed children (n = 22; M age = 10.82). Consistent with earlier research with children, we found that children with current major or minor depression, compared to children with no history of depression, exhibited attentional avoidance of sad facial stimuil as well as some evidence for preferential attention to happy faces. This study provides additional evidence that although depressed children demonstrate mood congruent attentional biases like that observed depressed adults, the nature of these biases may reflect attentional avoidance of sad stimuli, rather than preferential attention.
认知理论认为，注意偏向会导致抑郁症的发展和持续。与成年抑郁症患者一样，越来越多的证据表明，抑郁的青少年也存在对悲伤刺激的注意偏向。尽管儿童中这种偏向的方向尚不清楚，但初步证据表明儿童存在对悲伤刺激的注意回避。这是第一项使用眼动追踪来研究抑郁儿童注意偏向确切性质的已知研究。为了评估持续注意力，本研究使用眼动追踪和一个被动观看任务，让儿童在电脑屏幕上同时观看一系列四个面部表情（愤怒、快乐、悲伤、中性），持续20秒。本研究将当前抑郁儿童（n = 19；平均年龄 = 11.21岁）的注意力分配与一组从未患过抑郁症的儿童（n = 22；平均年龄 = 10.82岁）进行了比较。与早期对儿童的研究一致，我们发现，与没有抑郁症病史的儿童相比，患有当前重度或轻度抑郁症的儿童表现出对悲伤面部刺激的注意回避，以及一些对快乐面孔优先注意的证据。这项研究提供了额外的证据，表明尽管抑郁儿童表现出与成年抑郁症患者类似的情绪一致的注意偏向，但这些偏向的性质可能反映了对悲伤刺激的注意回避，而不是优先注意。
