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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Psychopathology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1459831
This article is part of the Research Topic Understanding Vulnerability to Major Depressive Disorder View all 7 articles

Depressive Self-focus Bias following Failure: An Eye-Tracking Study Among Individuals with Clinical Depression

Provisionally accepted
Jean Monéger Jean Monéger 1Ghina Harika-Germaneau Ghina Harika-Germaneau 2,3Nematollah Jaafari Nematollah Jaafari 2,3Damien Doolub Damien Doolub 2,3Laura Warck Laura Warck 3Leila Selimbegovic Leila Selimbegovic 2Armand Chatard Armand Chatard 2,3*
  • 1 Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne, Reims, France
  • 2 UMR7295 Centre de recherches sur la cognition et l'apprentissage (CeRCA), Poitiers, Poitou-Charentes, France
  • 3 Unité de Recherche Clinique, Centre Hospitalier Laborit, Poitiers, France

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Objective: Depression is often characterized by a persistent sense of failure. Cognitive theories of depression suggest that depressed individuals may exhibit a maladaptive cognitive style, characterized by increased self-focus following personal failure. The validity of this proposition, however, is yet to be fully examined. This study aimed to identify the relation between symptoms in major depressive disorder and increased selffocus in failure situations. Methods: This clinical study involved a cohort of 30 patients diagnosed with and treated for depression. We used an eye-tracking paradigm to observe and analyze gaze directionindicative of either self-focus or self-avoidanceafter remembering a significant failure event.Results: Contrary to the maladaptive cognitive style hypothesis, a majority of the depressed participants demonstrated an inclination towards self-avoidance following failure. Nevertheless, approximately 30% of the patient groupthose with the highest scores of guilt, punishment, and self-blamedisplayed a self-focused attentional bias post-failure.The presence of a maladaptive self-focusing style may be confined to severely depressed patients with high levels of guilt, punishment, and self-blame. These findings could have substantial clinical implications, as attention bias modification interventions could be particularly beneficial for this subgroup of patients.

    Keywords: Depression, Eye-tracking, self-focus, failure, attentional bias

    Received: 04 Jul 2024; Accepted: 04 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Monéger, Harika-Germaneau, Jaafari, Doolub, Warck, Selimbegovic and Chatard. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Armand Chatard, Unité de Recherche Clinique, Centre Hospitalier Laborit, Poitiers, France

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