Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, University Hospital, LMU Munich, Nußbaumstr. 5a, 80336, Munich, Germany.
Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, LMU Munich, Munich, Germany.
J Abnorm Child Psychol. 2020 Oct;48(10):1337-1350. doi: 10.1007/s10802-020-00670-3.
Negative interpretation biases have been found to characterize adults with depression and to be involved in the development and maintenance of the disorder. However, less is known about their role in youth depression. The present study investigated i) whether negative interpretation biases characterize children and adolescents with depression and ii) to what extent these biases are more pronounced in currently depressed youth compared to youth at risk for depression (as some negative interpretation biases have been found already in high-risk youth before disorder onset). After a negative mood induction interpretation biases were assessed with two experimental tasks: Ambiguous Scenarios Task (AST) and Scrambled Sentences Task (SST) in three groups of 9-14-year-olds: children and adolescents with a diagnosis of major depression (n = 32), children and adolescents with a high risk for depression (children of depressed parents; n = 48), as well as low-risk children and adolescents (n = 42). Depressed youth exhibited substantially more negative interpretation biases than both high-risk and low-risk groups (as assessed with both tasks), while the high-risk group showed more negative interpretation biases than the low-risk group only as assessed via the SST. The results indicate that the negative interpretation biases that are to some extent already present in high-risk populations before disorder onset are strongly amplified in currently depressed youth. The different findings for the two tasks suggest that more implicit interpretation biases (assessed with the SST) might represent cognitive vulnerabilities for depression whereas more explicit interpretation biases (assessed with the AST) may arise as a consequence of depressive symptomatology.
负性解释偏差被认为是成人抑郁症的特征，并与该障碍的发展和维持有关。然而，关于其在青少年抑郁症中的作用知之甚少。本研究调查了 i）负性解释偏差是否是儿童和青少年抑郁症的特征，以及 ii）与无抑郁风险的青少年相比，这些偏差在目前患有抑郁症的青少年中更为明显（因为一些负性解释偏差在发病前的高危青少年中已经存在）。在消极情绪诱导后，使用两项实验任务评估了解释偏差：模糊情境任务（AST）和混乱句子任务（SST），三个年龄组的 9-14 岁儿童和青少年：被诊断为重度抑郁症的儿童和青少年（n=32）、有抑郁父母的高抑郁风险儿童和青少年（n=48），以及低抑郁风险的儿童和青少年（n=42）。与高风险和低风险组相比（两项任务都评估了），患有抑郁症的青少年表现出明显更多的负性解释偏差，而高风险组仅在通过 SST 评估时比低风险组表现出更多的负性解释偏差。研究结果表明，在发病前的高危人群中已经存在的负性解释偏差在目前患有抑郁症的青少年中被强烈放大。这两项任务的不同发现表明，更隐含的解释偏差（通过 SST 评估）可能代表抑郁的认知脆弱性，而更明确的解释偏差（通过 AST 评估）可能是抑郁症状的结果。
