Selective attention to dysphoric stimuli by depressed and nondepressed individuals

The hypothesis that depressed individuals selectively attend to instances of depressive ideational themes (dysphoric stimuli) is derived from Beck's cognitive model of depression and general theories of information processing. A dichotic auditory shadowing task with alternating dysphoric and nondysphoric distraction was employed to assess relative allocations of attention to dysphoric and nondysphoric spoken prose by 88 mildly depressed, moderately and severely depressed, highly test-anxious nondepressed, and low test-anxious nondepressed university students. Only moderately and severely depressed Ss were significantly more distracted by dysphoric than nondysphoric stimuli, with Helplessness the most salient, and Failure the least salient, of ten depressive themes. All groups performed equally well with nondysphoric distraction. No subsequent changes of relative allocations of attention were found to result from experimenter-induced success-reward or failure-loss experiences. It is proposed that the results directly demonstrate depressive information processing disturbances at stimulus selection, which are congruent with Beck's formulations. The potency of descriptions of helplessness for the moderately and severely depressed groups support the Learned Helplessness model of depression. Selective attention to noncontingency may be a mechanism by which the cognitive set to perceive noncontingency produces perceptions of current helplessness