Emotional responding in depression: Distinctions in the time course of emotion

Abstract

The current studies were designed to investigate if the emotion context insensitivity hypothesis (ECI; Rottenberg & Gotlib, 2004) is applicable across the time course of emotion. Recent affective science research has pointed to the importance of considering anticipation and maintenance of emotion. In the current studies, we assessed emotion responses among college students with depression symptoms in anticipation of, during, and after an emotional picture using the emotion modulated startle paradigm. People with and without depression symptoms did not differ in blink magnitude in anticipation of emotional pictures suggesting that some anticipatory processes may not be impaired by depression symptoms. In contrast, individuals with depression symptoms did not exhibit blink magnitudes that varied by valence, either during viewing or after the pictures were removed from view. These findings suggest that ECI is relevant not only for those diagnosed with major depressive disorder, but also for people with depression symptoms that may not cross the diagnostic threshold. These data also point to the importance of considering the time course of emotion to better understand emotional deficits in individuals with differing levels of depression symptoms. Identifying where emotion goes awry across the time course of emotion can help inform treatment development.

Keywords:

• Depression
• Startle modulation
• Emotion
• Dysphoria
• Anticipation
• Maintenance

Acknowledgments

This research was supported in part by a graduate research fellowship from NSF awarded to Erin K. Moran.

We would like to thank Marja Germans Gard, David Gard, Yea-Hung Chen, Akiko Terao, Jen Dobbs, Roxanne Espaldon, Jake Smith, Brian Johnson, and Cara Eberhart for their assistance with various aspects of this project.

Notes

¹We also conducted the startle analyses using measures standardised within each individual (i.e., T scores). Specifically, blink magnitude means and standard deviations were computed across the valence conditions (positive, negative, neutral) but within each probe time and converted to T scores (M=50; SD=10). The standardisation procedure did not change the relative pattern of participants' responses across the picture types and probe times. Reported results did not differ with the use of T scores in Study 1. Although the direction and pattern of results were similar for Study 2, however, the reported interactions were now outside standard conventions of statistical significance (p=.12)