Spaeth Alexandra M, Koenig Stephan, Everaert Jonas, Glombiewski Julia A, Kube Tobias
Department of Psychology, University of Kaiserslautern-Landau, Landau, Germany.
Department of Medical and Clinical Psychology, Tilburg University, Tilburg, Netherlands.
Front Psychol. 2024 Feb 23;15:1253045. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1253045. eCollection 2024.
Depressive symptoms have been linked to difficulties in revising established negative beliefs in response to novel positive information. Recent predictive processing accounts have suggested that this bias in belief updating may be related to a blunted processing of positive prediction errors at the neural level. In this proof-of-concept study, pupil dilation in response to unexpected positive emotional information was examined as a psychophysiological marker of an attenuated processing of positive prediction errors associated with depressive symptoms.
Participants ( = 34) completed a modified version of the emotional Bias Against Disconfirmatory Evidence (BADE) task in which scenarios initially suggest negative interpretations that are later either confirmed or disconfirmed by additional information. Pupil dilation in response to the confirmatory and disconfirmatory information was recorded.
Behavioral results showed that depressive symptoms were related to difficulties in revising negative interpretations despite disconfirmatory positive information. The eye tracking results pointed to a reduced pupil response to unexpected positive information among people with elevated depressive symptoms.
Altogether, the present study demonstrates that the adapted emotional BADE task can be appropriate for examining psychophysiological aspects such as changes in pupil size along with behavioral responses. Furthermore, the results suggest that depression may be characterized by deviations in both behavioral (i.e., reduced updating of negative beliefs) and psychophysiological (i.e., decreased pupil dilation) responses to unexpected positive information. Future work should focus on a larger sample including clinically depressed patients to further explore these findings.
抑郁症状与在面对新的积极信息时难以修正既定的消极信念有关。近期的预测加工理论认为，这种信念更新偏差可能与神经层面上对积极预测误差的处理迟钝有关。在这项概念验证研究中，我们将对意外积极情绪信息的瞳孔扩张作为与抑郁症状相关的积极预测误差处理减弱的心理生理指标进行了研究。
参与者（ = 34）完成了一项修改版的针对反证的情绪偏见（BADE）任务，在该任务中，情景最初暗示消极解释，随后这些解释会被额外信息证实或证伪。记录对证实性和证伪性信息的瞳孔扩张情况。
行为结果表明，尽管有证伪性的积极信息，但抑郁症状与修正消极解释的困难有关。眼动追踪结果显示，抑郁症状较重的人对意外积极信息的瞳孔反应减弱。
总体而言，本研究表明，改编后的情绪BADE任务可适用于研究诸如瞳孔大小变化等心理生理方面以及行为反应。此外，结果表明，抑郁症可能表现为对意外积极信息的行为反应（即消极信念更新减少）和心理生理反应（即瞳孔扩张减少）均存在偏差。未来的工作应聚焦于纳入临床抑郁症患者的更大样本，以进一步探索这些发现。
