Carmelo Vázquez

Mood-congruent recall of affectively toned stimuli: A meta-analytic review

A subset of the published research on mood-congruent memory in normal nondepressed, subclinically depressed, clinically depressed, induced depressed, and induced elated persons is examined with meta-analytic techniques. We estimated the magnitude of mood-congruent recall for these mood states, examined their robustness, and studied within each mood state the extent to which the strength of mood-congruent recall was related to self-referenced encoding and mood intensity. Asymmetric recall favoring positive stimuli appears to be part of the normative pattern of memory performance among individuals that have been labeled normal nondepressed (dh = .15; p .20). Clinically depressed, induced depressed, and induced elated subjects display mood congruent recall (dh, = − .19; p < .05; dh = − .12, p < .05; dh = .08; p < .10). With the exception of induced elated mood, effect estimates derived from different studies are robust in that sampling error accounts for the entire variability among effect estimates obtained from different studies. In studies on induced-elated mood, self-referent processing was associated with stronger mood-congruent recall as compared to other studies. Caveats and implications for future research on mood and memory are discussed.

Automatic and effortful processing in depression.

Automatic processes require few attentional resources, but effortful processes use attentional capacity. Research on cognitive processing by depressed individuals is reviewed and the following is concluded: (a) Depression interferes with effortful processing. The degree of interference is determined by the degree of effortfulness of the task, the severity of depression, and the valence of the stimulus material to be processed. (b) Depression interferes only minimally with automatic processes. Hypothetical causal mechanisms for interference in effortful processes by depression, whether interference in effortful processing is unique to depression or characteristic of psychopathology in general, and whether negative automatic thoughts are associated with current depression or depression proneness are also addressed. The effortful-automatic perspective has implications for understanding depressive clinical features, treating depression, and conducting future research.

Attentional Disengagement Predicts Stress Recovery in Depression: An Eye-Tracking Study

Previous research has made significant progress elucidating the nature of cognitive biases in emotional disorders. However, less work has focused on the relation among cognitive biases and emotional responding in clinical samples. This study uses eye-tracking to examine difficulties disengaging attention from emotional material in depressed participants and to test its relation with mood reactivity and recovery during and after a stress induction. Participants diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and never-disordered control participants (CTL) completed a novel eye-tracking paradigm in which participants had to disengage their attention from emotional material to attend to a neutral stimulus. Time to disengage attention was computed using a direct recording of eye movements. Participants then completed a stress induction and mood reactivity and recovery were assessed. MDD compared with CTL participants took significantly longer to disengage from depression-related stimuli (i.e., sad faces). Individual differences in disengagement predicted lower recovery from sad mood in response to the stress induction in the MDD group. These results suggest that difficulties in attentional disengagement may contribute to the sustained negative affect that characterizes depressive disorders.

Lifetime and 12-month prevalence of DSM-III-R mental disorders among the homeless in Madrid : a European study using the CIDI

The characteristics of homeless people in Europe are almost unknown. The aim of this study was to describe the lifetime and 12‐month prevalence of DSM‐III‐R/CIDI mental disorders among the homeless population of Madrid. A total of 261 homeless subjects, sampled from different sites, participated in the study. In terms of DSM‐III‐R lifetime rates, 50% of the sample had substance‐related disorders and 35% had non‐substance‐related disorders. In total, 67% of the study subjects had some type of disorder. The lifetime prevalence of schizophrenia (4%) was lower than reported in most previous studies. Although the mental illness pattern is similar to that observed in studies using the same diagnostic methods, the results reported here show a lower prevalence of drug abuse and schizophrenic disorders. The reasons for these cultural differences and their implications for international public health research are discussed.

Double attention bias for positive and negative emotional faces in clinical depression: evidence from an eye-tracking study.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES According to cognitive models, attentional biases in depression play key roles in the onset and subsequent maintenance of the disorder. The present study examines the processing of emotional facial expressions (happy, angry, and sad) in depressed and non-depressed adults. METHODS Sixteen unmedicated patients with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and 34 never-depressed controls (ND) completed an eye-tracking task to assess different components of visual attention (orienting attention and maintenance of attention) in the processing of emotional faces. RESULTS Compared to ND, participants with MDD showed a negative attentional bias in attentional maintenance indices (i.e. first fixation duration and total fixation time) for sad faces. This attentional bias was positively associated with the severity of depressive symptoms. Furthermore, the MDD group spent a marginally less amount of time viewing happy faces compared with the ND group. No differences were found between the groups with respect to angry faces and orienting attention indices. LIMITATIONS The current study is limited by its cross-sectional design. CONCLUSIONS These results support the notion that attentional biases in depression are specific to depression-related information and that they operate in later stages in the deployment of attention.

Effects of Attention Process Training on cognitive functioning of schizophrenic patients

The goal of this study was to investigate the impact of Attention Process Training (APT) on cognitive functioning in schizophrenia. Twenty-four patients with schizophrenia were randomly assigned to one of the two following conditions: training by means of APT or no training. The dependent variables included measures of attention, memory and executive functions derived from a cancellation task, dichotic listening, dual task, Trail Making Test, Paced Auditory Serial Addition Task, Everyday Attention Questionnaire, Spain-Complutense Verbal Learning Test and Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST). All participants were also rated on measures of positive and negative symptoms. The tasks were administrated to all participants at baseline. Participants in the training group received individual intensive APT twice a week, whereas the control group did not receive training. All participants were subsequently retested on the same tests. Although, contrary to expectations, neither group improved on clinical and information-processing measures of attention and memory, patients in the trained group had a significantly higher performance on executive function (as measured by the WCST) than did the control group. We conclude that it is feasible to use practice in attention to remediate executive function deficits in schizophrenia.

Satisfaction with Life Scale in a Representative Sample of Spanish Adults: Validation and Normative Data

The Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) is a measure widely used to assess life satisfaction. This paper aims to test its psychometric properties, factor structure, and distribution scores across age, gender, education, and employment status. For this purpose, a representative sample of the Spanish population (N = 2,964) was used. Although analyses showed no significant differences across age or gender, participants with higher education level and those who held an occupation were more satisfied with their lives. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed a unifactorial structure with significant correlations between the SWLS, and subjective happiness and social support. The internal consistency of the scale was .88. Thus, our results indicate that the Spanish version of the SWLS is a valid and reliable measure of life satisfaction within the Spanish context.

Construction and validation of a measure of integrative well-being in seven languages: The Pemberton Happiness Index

PurposeWe introduce the Pemberton Happiness Index (PHI), a new integrative measure of well-being in seven languages, detailing the validation process and presenting psychometric data. The scale includes eleven items related to different domains of remembered well-being (general, hedonic, eudaimonic, and social well-being) and ten items related to experienced well-being (i.e., positive and negative emotional events that possibly happened the day before); the sum of these items produces a combined well-being index.MethodsA distinctive characteristic of this study is that to construct the scale, an initial pool of items, covering the remembered and experienced well-being domains, were subjected to a complete selection and validation process. These items were based on widely used scales (e.g., PANAS, Satisfaction With Life Scale, Subjective Happiness Scale, and Psychological Well-Being Scales). Both the initial items and reference scales were translated into seven languages and completed via Internet by participants (N = 4,052) aged 16 to 60 years from nine countries (Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, and USA).ResultsResults from this initial validation study provided very good support for the psychometric properties of the PHI (i.e., internal consistency, a single-factor structure, and convergent and incremental validity).ConclusionsGiven the PHI’s good psychometric properties, this simple and integrative index could be used as an instrument to monitor changes in well-being. We discuss the utility of this integrative index to explore well-being in individuals and communities.

Differential Patterns of Mental Disorders Among the Homeless in Madrid (Spain) and Los Angeles (USA)

Abstract In this paper we compare rates of mental disorders (major depression, dysthymia, cognitive impairment, and schizophrenia) among homeless people in Madrid and Los Angeles (LA) and examine the ordering of the onset of both conditions (i.e., homelessness and mental disorders). In the Madrid study, 262 homeless persons were interviewed using the CIDI. In the LA study, 1563 homeless persons were interviewed with the DIS. To make an item-by-item comparison, we combined the databases from both studies to submit a single database to statistical analyses. Results showed no significant differences in DSM-III-R life-time prevalence rates of mental disorders between both samples. However, the Madrid sample showed higher 12-month prevalence rates of dysthymia and cognitive impairment as compared to the LA sample. Most subjects across both cities first experienced symptoms of their mental disorders before first becoming homeless. The only significant difference was that all of the depressed adults in Madrid experienced depression prior to first becoming homeless, whereas this was the case for only 59.1% of LA depressed homeless people. We discuss the reasons for these cultural differences and their implications for cross-national public health research and intervention.

Post-Traumatic Stress Reactions Following the March 11, 2004 Terrorist Attacks in a Madrid Community Sample: A Cautionary Note about the Measurement of Psychological Trauma

Posttraumatic stress reactions related to the Madrid March 11, 2004, terrorist attacks were examined in a sample of Madrid residents (N = 503) 18-25 days after the attacks, using multiple diagnostic criteria and different cut-off scores. Based on the symptoms covered by the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Checklist-Civilian (PCL-C; Weathers, Litz, Herman, Huska, and Keane, 1993), rates of probable posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) ranged from 3.4% to 13.3%. Taking into account additional criteria from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 200; i.e., the impact of initial reaction and problems in daily functioning as a consequence of the traumatic event), only 1.9% of respondents reported probable PTSD. These results suggest that inferences about the impact of traumatic events on the general population are strongly influenced by the definition of traumatic response. Our findings also revealed that the magnitude of posttraumatic reactions is associated with several risk factors, including living close to the attacked locations, physical proximity to the attacks when they occurred, perception of ones life being at risk, intensity of initial emotional reactions, and being a daily user of the attacked train lines. The use of different cut-off scores did not affect the pattern of risk to develop traumatic stress. The implications of these results for public health policies related to terrorist attacks are discussed.