Journal of Kerman University of Medical Sciences

Global and Local Attention Processing in Depressed Mood

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Samaneh Mohammadi-Nasab 1
Masoud Fazilat-Pour 2
Abbas Rahmati 2

1 Master Student of General Psychology, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman, Kerman, Iran

2 Department of Psychology, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman, Kerman, Iran

Abstract
Background: Attention impairments are the hallmark feature of subclinical depression. The present study used Navon task to compare the allocation of attention to the local and global stimuli in depressed and nondepressed participants.
Method: The primary sample included 186 female high school students from Shiraz city who were selected using cluster sampling. The final sample included 145 participants with a stable mood during two-week mood monitoring (75 nondepressed and 70 depressed). A computerized version of Navon task was used to measure attention to local and global stimuli.
Results: Depressed participants showed relatively faster reaction times to the global stimuli than to the local stimuli when compared with those in the nondepressed group, which implies a more global scope of attention.
Conclusion: Findings are discussed in line with the available conceptualizations of attention changes in depression. In addition, the results are explained in terms of the defocused attention hypothesis and functional perspective of depressed mood.

Keywords

depression
Global attention
Local attention
Navon task
Defocused attention
  1. Vos T, Barber RM, Bell B, Bertozzi-Villa A, Biryukov S, Bolliger I, et al. Global, regional, and national incidence, prevalence, and years lived with disability for 301 acute and chronic diseases and injuries in 188 countries, 1990–2013: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013. The Lancet. 2015 Aug 22; 386(9995):743-800.
  2. Murray CJ, Lopez AD. Global health statistics: a compendium of incidence, prevalence and mortality estimates for over 200 conditions.  United States: Harvard School of Public Health; 1996.
  3. Ellis HC, Ashbrook PW. Resource allocation model of the effects of depressed mood states on memory. Affect, Cognition, and Social Behavior 1988; 25-43.
  4. Dobson DJG, Dobson KS. Problem-solving strategies in depressed and nondepressed college students. Cognitive Therapy and Research 1981; 5(3):237-49.
  5. Joormann J, Gotlib IH. Updating the contents of working memory in depression: interference from irrelevant negative material. J Abnorm Psychol 2008; 117(1):182-92.
  6. Asarnow LD, Thompson RJ, Joormann J, Gotlib IH. Children at risk for depression: memory biases, self-schemas, and genotypic variation. J Affect Disord 2014; 159:66-72.
  7. Sedek G, Brzezicka A, von Hecker U. The Unique Cognitive Limitation in Subclinical Depression: The Impairment of Mental Model Construction. In: Gruszka A, Matthews G, Szymura B, editors. Handbook of Individual Differences in Cognition: Attention, Memory, and Executive Control. New York, NY: Springer New York; 2010. p. 335-52.
  8. von Hecker U, Sedek G, Brzezicka A. Impairments in Mental Model Construction and Benefits of Defocused Attention. European Psychologist 2013; 18: 35-46.
  9. Gotlib IH, McLachlan AL, Katz AN. Biases in Visual Attention in Depressed and Nondepressed Individuals. Cognition and Emotion 1988; 2(3):185-200.
  10. Gotlib IH, McCann CD. Construct accessibility and depression: an examination of cognitive and affective factors. J Pers Soc Psychol 1984; 47(2):427-39.
  11. Sarason IG, Sarason BR, Pierce GR. Cognitive Interference: Theories, Methods, and Findings (Lea's Personality and Clinical Psychology Series). 1th ed. New York: Routledge; 1996.
  12. Linville P. Attention inhibition: Does it underlie ruminative thought? Advances in Social Cognition 1996; 9:121-33.
  13. Matthews GR, Antes JR. Visual attention and depression: Cognitive biases in the eye fixations of the dysphoric and the nondepressed. Cognitive Therapy and Research 1992; 16(3):359-71.
  14. Von Hecker U, Meiser T. Defocused attention in depressed mood: evidence from source monitoring. Emotion 2005; 5(4):456-63.
  15. Eriksen CW, Yeh YY. Allocation of attention in the visual field. J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform 1985; 11(5):583-97.
  16. Brzezicka A, Krejtz I, von Hecker U, Laubrock J. Eye movement evidence for defocused attention in dysphoria--a perceptual span analysis. Int J Psychophysiol 2012; 85(1):129-33.
  17. Gable P, Harmon-Jones E. The blues broaden, but the nasty narrows: attentional consequences of negative affects low and high in motivational intensity. Psychol Sci 2010; 21(2):211-5.
  18. Gable P, Harmon-Jones E. The motivational dimensional model of affect: Implications for breadth of attention, memory, and cognitive categorisation. Cognition and Emotion 2010; 24(2):322-37.
  19. De Fockert JW, Cooper A. Higher levels of depression are associated with reduced global bias in visual processing. Cogn Emot 2014; 28(3):541-9.
  20. Klinger E. Consequences of commitment to and disengagement from incentives. Psychological Review 1975; 82(1):1-25.
  21. Nesse RM. Evolutionary explanations of emotions. Hum Nat 1990; 1(3):261-89.
  22. Nesse R. Emotional disorders in evolutionary perspective. Br J Med Psychol 1998; 71 (Pt 4):397-415
  23. Welling H. An evolutionary function of the depressive reaction: the cognitive map hypothesis. New Ideas in Psychology 2003; 21(2):147-56.
  24. Frijda NH. The Emotions (Studies in Emotion and Social Interaction).  USA: Cambridge University Press; 1986.
  25. Oatley K, Johnson-Laird PN. Towards a cognitive theory of emotions. Cognition and Emotion 1987; 1(1):29-50.
  26. Klinger E, Cox WM. Motivation and the Theory of Current Concerns.  Handbook of Motivational Counseling: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2008. p. 1-27.
  27. Ghassemzadeh H, Mojtabai R, Karamghadiri N, Ebrahimkhani N. Psychometric properties of a Persian-language version of the Beck Depression Inventory--Second edition: BDI-II-PERSIAN. Depress Anxiety 2005; 21(4):185-92.
  28. Kaviani H, Mousavi AS. Psychometric properties of the Persian version of Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI). Tehran Univ Med J 2008; 66(2):136-40. Persian
  29. Navon D. Forest before trees: The precedence of global features in visual perception. Cognitive Psychology 1977; 9(3):353-83.
  30. Fredrickson BL. The role of positive emotions in positive psychology. The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. Am Psychol 2001; 56(3):218-26.
  31. Mathôt S, Schreij D, Theeuwes J. OpenSesame: An open-source, graphical experiment builder for the social sciences. Behav Res Methods 2012; 44(2): 314–24.
  32. Gannon KM, Skowronski JJ, Betz AL. Depressive diligence in social information processing: Implications for order effects in impressions and for social memory. Social Cognition 1994; 12(4): 263-80.
  33. Ric F, Scharnitzky P. Effects of control deprivation on effort expenditure and accuracy performance. European Journal of Social Psychology 2003; 33(1):103-18.
  34. Gleicher F, Weary G. Effect of depression on quantity and quality of social inferences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1991; 61(1): 105-14.
  35. Pittman TS, D'Agostino PR. Motivation and attribution: The effects of control deprivation on subsequent information processing. New York: Academic Press; 1985.
  36. Bugental DB, Lewis JC. Interpersonal Power Repair in Response to Threats to Control from Dependent Others. In: Kofta M, Weary G, Sedek G, editors. Personal Control in Action: Cognitive and Motivational Mechanisms. Boston, MA: Springer US; 1998. p. 341-62.
  37. Kofta M, Sedek G. Uncontrollability as a Source of Cognitive Exhaustion. In: Kofta M, Weary G, Sedek G, editors. Personal Control in Action: Cognitive and Motivational Mechanisms. Boston, MA: Springer US; 1998. p. 391-418.
  38. Hammar A, Lund A, Hugdahl K. Selective impairment in effortful information processing in major depression. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society 2003; 9(6):954-9.
  39. Fazilat-Pour M. Defocused attention in depressed mood [dissertation]. Cardiff University, UK, 2009.
  40. Weary G, Marsh KL, Gleicher F, Edwards JA. Depression, control motivation, and the processing of information about others. In Control motivation and social cognition 1993 (pp. 255-287). Springer New York.

 

 

Journal of Kerman University of Medical Sciences
Volume 24, Issue 5
2017
Pages 397-405

Home

Editorial Board

Guide for Authors

Submit Manuscript

Guide for Reviewers

Contact Us