Selective attention and depression: A critical review

This article reviews the research on selective attention to emotional information in depression comparing groups of individuals with and without (clinical or subclinical) depression on experimental cognitive tasks, as well as the research on its specificity in comparison with anxiety and its causal status. In contrast to claims made by Williams et al.’s (1988) model on cognition and emotional disorders, evidence suggests that depression is associated with the existence of attentional biases to negative information or with the absence of the positive attentional biases evident in normal persons, supporting in this way Beck’s (1987, 1991) cognitive theory. Although not conclusive enough, evidence also suggests that negative attentional biases in depression and anxiety differ from each other according to the content of the prioritized information, supporting Beck’s content-specificity hypothesis, and that negative attentional biases may be a causal factor in the maintenance or exacerbation of depressive disorders.