Neuropsychological and interpersonal antecedents of youth depression

Abstract

This research examined neuropsychological and interpersonal factors that jointly confer vulnerability to youth depression. We proposed that (1) a reduced posterior right-hemisphere bias during the processing of facial expressions contributes to subsequent depressive symptoms in youth, and (2) maladaptive responses to interpersonal stress account for this association. Drawing from theory and research indicating sex differences in rates of hemispheric development, we also investigated sex differences in the associations among a reduced posterior right-hemisphere bias, maladaptive responses to interpersonal stress, and depressive symptoms. Hypotheses were examined in a longitudinal study of 95 4th to 8th graders (M _age=12.33, SD=1.10). Results supported the notion that a reduced posterior right-hemisphere bias confers vulnerability to depressive symptoms over time in a sex-specific fashion, and implicate maladaptive stress responses as an explanatory mechanism.

Keywords:

• Depression
• Sex differences
• Neuropsychological performance
• Interpersonal stress

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Research Board Arnold O. Beckman Award, a William T. Grant Foundation Faculty Scholars Award, and National Institute of Mental Health Grant MH59711 awarded to the second author.

We express our appreciation to participating families for their facilitation of this study. We also thank Wendy Heller for her helpful comments, and Melissa Caldwell, Alyssa Clark, Colleen Conley, Alison Dupre, Kathryn Kurlakowsky, Sharon Lambert, and Lori Osborne for their assistance in data collection and management.

Notes

¹To investigate whether other markers of development yielded a similar pattern of findings, moderation analyses also were conducted using indices of pubertal status; the pattern of findings replicated those for age. We also examined whether age or pubertal status moderated the prior findings. Analyses revealed that neither age nor pubertal status significantly moderated the CFT × Peer Stress × Sex interaction to predict depressive symptoms over time.