Selective Information-Processing in Depressed Children and Adolescents: Is There a Difference in Processing of Self-Referent and Other-Referent Information?

Abstract

In this study, selective memory-processing of self-referent and other-referent information in depressed children was examined. A control group (N = 50) and a depressed group (N = 22) were given two intentional self-referent encoding tasks, in which participants were presented with positive and negative adjectives. In the first experiment, participants were given self-referent and structural instructions. The second experiment included a self-referent instruction and an other-referent instruction. The encoding tasks were followed by a recall task. The results of the first experiment supported the selective processing hypothesis for self-referent information in depressed children and adolescents. However, the recall ratios of positive and negative information after focusing on self and others in the second experiment revealed that depressed children diverted their attention away from negative self-referent information and displayed memory-processing similar to nondepressed children.