Graduation Semester and Year
2016
Language
English
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology
Department
Psychology
First Advisor
William Ickes
Abstract
Individuals with high depressive symptomatology have better memory for negative events than positive events. The preferential processing of negative information supports the theory of a depressive self-schema in individuals diagnosed with depression (Beck, 1979). Processing information through a depressive self-schema (or mindset) can perpetuate negative rumination and worsen the symptoms related to depression. Although it is well established that individuals with high depressive symptomatology remember more unpleasant information than positive or neutral information, not as much is known about whether or not these individuals possess a selective bias for processing depression-related unpleasant information (i.e., words such as lonely, sadness, lethargy) over other unpleasant information (i.e., words such as rotten, seasick, victim). To investigate this phenomenon, electroencephalography (EEG) was used to measure the temporal resolution of brain activity while individuals who score high and low in symptoms of depression participated in an event-related memory task involving unpleasant (depression-related and general) and neutral words. Contrary to the initial hypothesis, individuals with high depressive symptomatology did not show a selective memory benefit for unpleasant depression-related information over and above generally unpleasant and neutral information at all levels of processing. Nor did they exhibit within-group differences in event-related potential (ERPs) corresponding to processing depression-related content versus generally unpleasant content. However, individuals with high depressive symptomatology did exhibit between-group differences in mean reaction time, ERPs, and alpha band activity in comparison to individuals with low depressive symptomatology. These findings provide supporting evidence of a distinction in implicit processing (i.e. mean reaction time) and neural processing (i.e. ERPs related to unpleasant and neutral processing) between groups of high and low depressive symptomatology.
Keywords
Levels of processing, Memory, Depressive self-schema, Depression, EEG
Disciplines
Psychology | Social and Behavioral Sciences
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Gandy, Kellen C., "An EEG Investigation of a Depressive Self-Schema Related to Levels of Processing in Individuals With High Depressive Symptomatology" (2016). Psychology Dissertations. 129.
https://mavmatrix.uta.edu/psychology_dissertations/129
Comments
Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington