Abstract
The current study examined two possible antecedents of depressive cognition: diagnostic status and information varying in positive, neutral, or negative valence. The participants were 62 elders: 26 outpatients with a major depressive disorder and 36 community controls. These subjects were randomly assigned to one of three conditions of valenced information given by means of three versions of short stories followed by questions tapping cognitive distortions. MANCOVAs and ANCOVAs indicated significant main effects and an interaction of depressed versus nondepressed diagnostic status and positive, neutral, or negative valence condition on the depressive-distorted scale: Negative stories and the depressive diagnostic status produced more distortions than the neutral or positive versions of stories or depressed group membership. It was concluded that depressive cognition is influenced by the valence of contextual information; cognition is not necessarily autonomous from current diagnostic status.
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Our thanks go to Troy Schmit for data collection, to Alice Benedict for her help with the computer system, and to Steve Lovett for his help with data analyses. This study was supported in part by R01-MH 37196 to Larry W. Thompson.
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Krantz, S.E., Gallagher-Thompson, D. Depression and information valence influence depressive cognition. Cogn Ther Res 14, 95–108 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01173527
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01173527