Mood symptoms and emotional responsiveness to threat in school-aged children.

Clinical accounts of depression underscore its relation to negative emotional experiences; yet few empirical studies examine emotional experiences in adults with depression, with even less work on depression and emotion in children. Using a nonclinical sample of school-aged children (n = 89) ages 8 to 12, this study evaluated whether greater mood symptoms were associated with more or less intense emotional reactions (measured via psychophysiology, subjective report, and behavior) in response to a threat paradigm. Results indicated that greater negative mood symptoms were associated with larger startle magnitude responses during threat, increased self-reports of negative emotion, and greater likelihood of crying and stopping the paradigm prematurely.