Department of Psychology, University of South Carolina, 29201, Columbia, SC, USA.
Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA.
Res Child Adolesc Psychopathol. 2024 Sep;52(9):1469-1483. doi: 10.1007/s10802-024-01205-w. Epub 2024 May 7.
Maternal depression is a predictor of the emergence of depression in the offspring. Attention bias (AB) to negative emotional stimuli in children may serve as a risk factor for children of depressed parents. The present study aimed to examine the effect of maternal major depressive disorder (MDD) history on AB to emotional faces in children at age four, before the age of onset for full-blown psychiatric symptoms. The study also compared AB patterns between mothers and their offspring. Fifty-eight mothers and their four-year-old children participated in this study, of which 27 high-risk (HR) children had mothers with MDD during their children's lifetime. Attention to emotional faces was measured in both children and their mothers using an eye-tracking visual search task. HR children exhibited faster detection and longer dwell time toward the sad than happy target faces. The low-risk (LR) children also displayed a sad bias but to a lesser degree. Children across both groups showed AB towards angry target faces, likely reflecting a normative AB pattern. Our findings indicate that AB to sad faces may serve as an early marker of depression risk. However, we provided limited support for the mother-child association of AB. Future research is needed to examine the longitudinal intergenerational transmission of AB related to depression and possible mechanisms underlying the emergence of AB in offspring of depressed parents.
母亲抑郁是后代出现抑郁的预测因素。儿童对负性情绪刺激的注意偏向（AB）可能是抑郁父母子女的风险因素。本研究旨在探讨母亲重度抑郁症（MDD）病史对儿童在出现全面精神病症状之前四岁时对情绪面孔的 AB 的影响。该研究还比较了母亲和她们的孩子的 AB 模式。58 名母亲及其四岁的孩子参加了这项研究，其中 27 名高风险（HR）儿童在其孩子的一生中母亲患有 MDD。使用眼动追踪视觉搜索任务测量儿童和母亲对情绪面孔的注意。HR 儿童对悲伤的目标面孔的检测速度更快，注视时间更长。低风险（LR）儿童也表现出悲伤偏见，但程度较轻。两个组的儿童都对愤怒的目标面孔表现出 AB，可能反映了一种正常的 AB 模式。我们的研究结果表明，对悲伤面孔的 AB 可能是抑郁风险的早期标志物。然而，我们对 AB 的母婴关联提供的支持有限。需要进一步的研究来检验与抑郁相关的 AB 的纵向代际传递以及抑郁父母子女中 AB 出现的可能机制。
