No description available.

No description available.

Cognitive, motivational, and emotional contributors to depressive affect were investigated in dependent and self-critical college students. In the first study, Dependency and Self-Criticism were related to anaclitic and introjective dysfunctional cognitions which explained part of the variance in perceived stress for events involving loss and failure respectively. In the second study, the personality styles were related to different motive dispositions including achievement, affiliation and intimacy. Dependency and Self-Criticism were also related to motivational characteristics which were significant predictors of positive and negative affect. In the third study, Dependency was linked to the occurrence of romantic relationship stressors and Self-Criticism to academic stressors. Both personality styles were related to greater ambivalence over emotional expression, which significantly predicted depression. The variables from the cognitive, motivational, and emotional domains, and stress, were combined in an integrative vulnerability model for depression.

Several past studies have identified that dysphoric undergraduates (those with depressed mood) sometimes give estimates of their control over outcomes closer to the actual contingency than estimates made by the nondepressed. This "depressive realism" phenomenon is typically found in tasks with zero control and frequent outcomes. The present paper investigates this phenomenon with a more powerful design for comparing estimates. Experiment 1 manipulated motivation for accuracy to compare the prevalent self-serving motivational bias explanation to an information processing bias perspective. Depressive realism was found under the typical conditions, but under conditions of higher motivation for accuracy, all participants overestimated their control on the key task. Response patterns appeared to influence estimates via the proportion of exposure to different trial events. Experiment 2 confirmed an influence of response frequency on estimate bias. In Experiment 3 the depressive realism pattern was found for positively valent outcomes, but the reverse pattern occurred for negatively valent outcomes. Both those with and without depressed mood showed biased processing on some tasks. The implications for contingency processing in depressives and the general population are addressed.

No description available.

The hypothesis that depressed individuals selectively attend to instances of depressive ideational themes (dysphoric stimuli) is derived from Beck's cognitive model of depression and general theories of information processing. A dichotic auditory shadowing task with alternating dysphoric and nondysphoric distraction was employed to assess relative allocations of attention to dysphoric and nondysphoric spoken prose by 88 mildly depressed, moderately and severely depressed, highly test-anxious nondepressed, and low test-anxious nondepressed university students. Only moderately and severely depressed Ss were significantly more distracted by dysphoric than nondysphoric stimuli, with Helplessness the most salient, and Failure the least salient, of ten depressive themes. All groups performed equally well with nondysphoric distraction. No subsequent changes of relative allocations of attention were found to result from experimenter-induced success-reward or failure-loss experiences. It is proposed that the results directly demonstrate depressive information processing disturbances at stimulus selection, which are congruent with Beck's formulations. The potency of descriptions of helplessness for the moderately and severely depressed groups support the Learned Helplessness model of depression. Selective attention to noncontingency may be a mechanism by which the cognitive set to perceive noncontingency produces perceptions of current helplessness.

Thesis (M. Med. Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 2005. / Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Psychology, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 252-286).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 162-171).

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison. / Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 168-176).