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The following is a summary of “Depressive self-focus bias following failure: an eye-tracking study among individuals with clinical depression,” published in the October 2024 issue of Psychiatry by et al.
Depression is characterized by a persistent sense of failure, with cognitive theories suggesting that individuals with major depressive disorder may show increased self-focus after personal setbacks.
Researchers performed a retrospective analysis to examine how symptoms of major depressive disorder related to heightened self-focus after experiencing personal failure.
They conducted a clinical study involving a cohort of 30 patients diagnosed with and treated for depression. An eye-tracking paradigm was utilized to examine gaze direction, revealing instances of either self-focus or self-avoidance as participants reflected on a significant failure event.
The results showed that contrary to the maladaptive cognitive style hypothesis, a majority of the depressed participants demonstrated an inclination towards self-avoidance following failure. However, approximately 30% of the patient group—those with the highest scores of guilt, punishment, and self-blame—exhibited a self-focused attentional bias post-failure. This indicates that while self-avoidance may be prevalent, certain individuals with elevated feelings of guilt and self-blame are more likely to engage in self-focused thinking after experiencing failure.
Investigators found that the presence of a maladaptive self-focusing style was confined to severely depressed patients with high levels of guilt, punishment, and self-blame. These findings indicated that attention bias modification interventions can be beneficial for the subgroup of patients.
Source: frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1459831/full
