The impact of self-referential processing on depression-linked negative interpretive bias

Cognitive theories propose that individuals with heightened depression are characterized by biases in memory and interpretation, favoring the processing of negative information. Individuals with heightened depression exhibit a negative memory bias, and this bias is disproportionately evident when emotional information is processed in a self-referential manner. In studies investigating whether individuals with heightened depression exhibit a negative interpretative bias, the measures employed have often been compromised by serious methodological limitations. When interpretation has been measured using an eye-blink modulation approach, which overcomes these limitations, evidence of depression-linked negative interpretive bias has emerged. However, the important issue of whether this bias depends upon self-referential processing has gone unresolved.

In the present study, we assessed interpretation using the eye blink modulation approach, in participants scoring high or low on the Beck Depression Inventory-II. A simple manipulation ensured that ambiguous information either was, or was not, processed in a self-referential manner.

The results showed that, when ambiguous information was processed in a self-referential manner, participants scoring high on the BDI-II displayed blink magnitudes indicating greater negative interpretative bias compared to participants scoring low on the BDI-II. This was not the case when ambiguous information was processed in an other-referential manner.

The present findings do not permit the inference that this negative interpretive bias causally contributes to depressive symptomatology.

The results support the hypothesis that people with high levels of depression display greater negative interpretive bias than people with low levels of depression, but only when ambiguous information is processed in a self-referential manner.