Our senses are constantly stimulated. Processing all this information at the same time is virtually impossible. Choices must be made, distinguishing relevant from irrelevant information. The information processing style used determines the way in which individuals perceive, process and remember information. This article will use research to examine the way in which depressed children and adolescents process information. The information processing style depends on many factors, such as personality, situation and mood. For example, an optimist will process information differently than a pessimist. To illustrate: A man recently asked another what he thought of his new car. The other expressed somewhat indifferently that the car looked quite good. However, this indifference made the man think that the other person was saying this purely out of politeness, but in fact thought the car was hideous. This is a typical ambiguous situation where a specific information processing style may come to light. Where an optimist sees the other person’s comment as a compliment, a more negative person may interpret it as a disguised insult. In other words, the same information can lead to two different perspectives.
Previous research on depressed individuals
In the past, much research has been done into the information processing style of depressed adults. It is assumed that depressed people remember and process negative information more quickly. Based on the associative network theory (Bower, 1981, 1992), it can be stated that depression can lead to a bias towards negative information, because this information is congruent with one’s own mood. A negative cognitive network is created that can be activated faster than positive connotations. In other words, depressed people develop a negative schema (Beck, 1967) that acts as a moderator. This moderator colors attention and the interpretation of stimuli. Self-Referent Encoding Task (SRET) research supports these assumptions, as depressed adults remember negative information better than positive information. Research is also being conducted into depressed children and adolescents, although this is much scarcer compared to research into depressed adults. Research by Joiner, Katz, and Lew (1997) has shown that depressed compared to non-depressed children and adolescents pay more attention to negative feedback and that this association is cognitive in nature. These and other studies show that information processing biases and negative schemata characterize depressed individuals of all ages (Gençöz, 2001). Gençöz, et al. (2001) want to further map the research on depressed adolescents and children.
Anxiety disorders and depression: right or wrong?
The literature often speaks of a comorbidity of depression with other (anxiety) disorders. A high correlation between anxiety and depression has been found for children and adolescents (Brady & Kendall, 1992), as well as for adults (Clark, Beck, & Stewart, 1990) (Gençöz, 2001). However, at the same time there is also disagreement as to whether there is a difference between the two disorders or whether it reflects the same underlying process. Research in this area is mixed, although recent work by Yim, and Umemoto (2000) supports the idea of a tripartite model (Clark & Watson, 1991) in which the cognitions of depressed and anxious children and adolescents do differ. Based on these and other studies, the study by Gençöz, et al. (2001) aims to differentiate anxiety and depression from each other in order to gain a complete picture of the etiology of depressive symptoms. Moreover, a more precise theoretical approach to cognitive vulnerability can provide a basis for prevention research (Gençöz, 2001).
Gençöz’s research
The study consisted of 58 children and adolescents between the ages of 9 and 17, all of whom were residents of a large academic medical center as psychiatric patients. The study population was then divided into one block of children aged 12 years or younger and one block of adolescents aged 13 years or older. Of these 58 participants, 15 participants ultimately dropped out because they did not want or could not participate in the study for various reasons. The remaining 43 participants were subjected to 3 tests, namely the SRET, the Children’s Depression Inventory (CDI) and the Revised Children’s Manifest Anxiety Scale (RCMAS). The tests were administered by a psychometrician who was not familiar with the hypotheses of the study or the values of the scores assigned. In the first test, the SRET, children were shown 24 positive and negative cards and had to indicate whether the word on the card described them or not. Five minutes after this task, they then checked how many positive and negative adjectives they had remembered. The second test, the CDI, is a self-report test that measures depressive symptoms. The third and final test, the RCMAS, is a scale consisting of 37 items, which focuses on the measurement of a general anxiety disorder.
Conclusion
The results of the SRET showed that there is a significant negative correlation between positive adjectives and depression. This means that the fewer positive adjectives are remembered, the greater the chance of symptoms of depression. The research also shows that this finding does not apply to symptoms of anxiety disorders. In contrast, primarily remembering negative adjectives is a good predictor of symptoms of anxiety disorders. This means that there is a notable distinction between depression and anxiety disorders. Depression is mainly characterized by a lack of positive emotions, as also assumed in the tripartite model (Clark & Watson, 1991), while anxiety disorders mainly involve an excess of negative emotions. It is also striking that positive words that were experienced as self-descriptive by the depressed participants were not remembered better. This indicates that the participants lack a positive schema, because apparently only negative information is processed. In other words, depression is not so much characterized by pessimism, but mainly by a lack of optimism.