Selective attention biases of people with depression: positive and negative priming of depression-related information.

Selective attention biases are believed to be one of the cognitive vulnerabilities to depression. This study examined two types of attention biases, namely attention facilitation and attention disinhibition, towards mood-congruent words in 40 clinically depressed outpatients and 40 never-depressed healthy controls. Measures were differential reaction time towards neutral and depressive words in the positive and negative priming paradigms that were used to assess attention facilitation and attention disinhibition, respectively. Results showed that the depressed group exhibited enhanced attention facilitation to depressive words relative to neutral words, whereas the control group did not. The differential reduction of reaction time of the depressed group to the previously presented depressive words relative to the previously presented neutral words was greater than that in the control group. On the other hand, both groups showed similar attention disinhibition to depressive words relative to neutral words. The differential increase in reaction time to previously ignored depressive words relative to the previously ignored neutral words was similar in both groups. The above results suggest that major depressive disorder is characterized by attention facilitation by mood-congruent information, but inhibition difficulties in attention to depression-related information is not specific to depressive disorder.