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

Comments

Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington

26137-2.zip (1410 kB)

Included in

Psychology Commons

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