Abstract
Depression is known to influence an individual’s cognition and reaction. With this, studies were analyzed to come up a consistent assumptions and conclusions about how cognition and depression is connected. Cognitive Theories of Depression was discussed. The foundations of cognitive theories of depression was briefly explained, and later focused on studies by Aaron Beck, Dr. Albert Ellis and Martin Seligman. The main principles and assumptions of their works were explained as well as analyzed their objectives and proposals. Moreover, cognitive deficits in depressed individuals were discussed. Furthermore, it was explained how cognitive deficits develop, and the idea of memory impairment of depressed individuals was examined.
Introduction
Depression is believed to change not only how a person feels, but more importantly, how a person perceives the environment and interpret stimuli. And so, series of investigation and research was done to understand the specific connection of cognition and emotion to depression and depressive symptoms. It is accepted that series of negative thoughts such as failures, rejections and hopelessness are prominent to individuals with depression. Thus, studies focused on understanding the interconnection of thoughts to depression and its characteristics such as severity, depressive cognition and reaction. Moreover, it was observed that there exist biases in information processing, and deficits in memory and cognitive operations of individuals with depression (Gotlib and Joormann, 2010). Thus, this paper will serve as an analysis of how cognition is being affected and influenced by depression.
Series of studies contribute to cognitive theories of depression, and almost all were based on the idea that memory representation called schemas causes a person to perceive the environment in a way such that his or her attention focuses on events and information similar or related with his or her existing schemas. Therefore, since people with depression have negative schemas, they tend to screen the negative information from the environment and ignore positive information (Gotlib and Joormann, 2010).
Aaron Beck stated that there exist three main dysfunctional belief themes named the negative cognitive triad. These three dysfunctional beliefs are: thoughts of being inadequate or defective, thoughts that all experiences are likely to turn out as a defeat or failure, and thoughts of the future being hopeless. In addition, Dr. Albert Ellis stated that there are three irrational beliefs present in people with depressive thoughts. These three irrational beliefs tend to form as absolute statements: “I must be competent in everything I do, or I am worthless”, “People must treat me considerately, or they are terrible people”, “The world must always bring happiness, or I will die.” And lastly, Martin Seligman stated that learned helplessness can be a cause of depression, and may give insights on how depressed people react to events in their life. Seligman postulated that when an individual learns that certain events are inescapable and uncontrollable, and so, he or she tends to accept or learn being helpless. Learned helplessness theory helped us understand how reactions to stressful events may occur to depression. Finally, this paper will discuss how depression results to cognitive deficits.
Cognitive Theories of Depression
It is known that cognitive theories of depression were first postulated about forty years ago. It is believed that existing schemas (memory representation) causes an individual to view any situation such that their attention is focused on information similar with his or her schemas. Meaning to say, an individual filters stimuli from the environment according to his or her existing schemas. Thus, it was postulated that depressed individuals have schemas with themes of loss, failure, rejection, worthlessness or separation. Needless to say, depressed individuals tend to interpret the environment with negative stimuli. In addition, dysfunctional schemas and processing biases are believed to be occurring almost always during depressive onsets and recurrences (Gotlib and Joormann, 2010).
Furthermore, it is believed that there exists a correlation between the amount and severity of an individual’s thoughts and the severity of his or her depression and depressive symptoms. It was observed that high amount of negative schemas result to a more severe case of depression (Nemadi, Reiss and Dombeck, 2007).
Cognitive Theories of Depression: Aaron Beck
Moreover, Beck postulated that there exist three main themes of dysfunctional belief of depressed individuals. First theme corresponds to the thought of being defective or inadequate. Second theme of thoughts states that all experiences will result in defeat or failure. And the last theme displays the thought of being hopeless about the future. Altogether, these three themes are known as the Negative Cognitive Triad. Therefore, when Negative Cognitive is present to an individual, he or she may likely become depressed (if not already been depressed) (Nemadi, Reiss and Dombeck, 2007).
For instance, a man just got laid off from work. If Negative Cognitive Triad themes were present, that man would think that the layoff occurred because he was a failure. Also, he would think that he would lose any job he might get, and that his situation is hopeless. With this thoughts, depression may likely occur. In contrast, a person not influenced by the Negative Cognitive Triad themes would most likely think that the layoff has something to do with the economic position of the employer and not about his work performance. Also, he would not think about anything that would create doubts about him, or that this experience would mean that his situation is hopeless. He would likely respond to this layoff by dusting off his resume and search for available jobs (Nemadi, Reiss and Dombeck, 2007).
Cognitive Theories of Depression: Dr. Albert Ellis
There also exists a correlation between irrational beliefs and depression. This theory states that irrational beliefs tend to form absolute statements. Furthermore, these irrational beliefs were found to have three main absolute statements. First irrational belief states that an individual must be competent in everything he or she does, if not, then he or she is worthless. Second irrational belief states that an individual must be treated by others considerately, if not, then they are terrible people. The last irrational belief states that the world must always give him or her happiness, if not, then he or she will die (Nemadi, Reiss and Dombeck, 2007).
It is important to note that there exists an emphasis on how irrational beliefs tend to make depressed people think that they have overwhelming needs that simply must be fulfilled. Thus, Dr. Albert Ellis, one of the most prominent contributors of these findings, referred to this absolutism as “musterbation” (Nemadi, Reiss and Dombeck, 2007.
Overall, it was found out that there exists an information processing bias in depressed people’s cognition. It was confirmed that depressed people tend to ignore positive events and information, focus attention to negative events and information, and overgeneralize almost every event. Overgeneralization of events was seen on how depressed people think that all similar or related events will turn out badly after some isolated event has turned out badly (Nemadi, Reiss and Dombeck, 2007).
Cognitive Theories of Depression: Martin Seligman
Martin Seligman found out that depression may be caused by a phenomenon known as the Learned Helplessness. Learned helplessness was first observed on dogs while they were being tested to predict escape learning hypothesis. An experiment was done where they were classically conditioned to shock using a signal which is light. Then, the avoidance learning of the dog will be tested using another signal, a tone. The third phase of the experiment will be very crucial because the avoidance learning of the animal will be tested using the signal it was classically conditioned, which is the light. However, after the dogs were classically conditioned, they did not learn to escape the shock during the avoidance procedure which is a precondition for the third phase. As it turned out, the solution was to reverse the processes, starting with the avoidance learning process, then the classical conditioning process. The research was done, and the process of prediction testing was successful (Maier, Peterson, & Schwartz, 2000). However, a student of Solomon laboratory and a graduate student in Henry Gleitman's laboratory, named Martin Seligman and Steven Maier, respectively, pondered about the reason behind the inability of the animals to learn to avoid the shocks in the first prediction testing. Clearly, there must be something about the classical conditioning process that hindered the ability of the animals to escape the shock in the second process (Maier, Peterson, & Schwartz, 2000). And so, they did an experiment with the dogs strapped using a harness to prevent them from escaping the shocks. At first, the dogs behaved just like the other dogs in the previous experiments. But, after the dogs panicked, they stopped moving, lay down, and just whined. The behavior was observed to be an acceptance of the shocks to be inescapable. And so, it was concluded that the dogs learned that the shocks were uncontrollable, and that they were helpless. Later on, they did another experiment where these dogs were placed in the same environment but without the harness. That is, they could escape the shocks by crossing the barrier. But, even though they could escape, the dogs did not. Their earlier notion that the shocks were uncontrollable, thus, inescapable, were so powerful that they accepted the shock without trying to escape (Ludwig, n.d.). These series of experiments confirmed Learned Helplessness Theory, and states that animals, including humans, learn that natural events are inescapable and uncontrollable, and so, they tend to become helpless.
Learned helplessness was found to influence humans, especially about the way humans deal with negative events, or what we often call stressful events. An individual may feel depressed if the person learned to be helpless from a stressful event. This implies that a depressed person is depressed because he or she accepted the fact that some factors in the environment is uncontrollable, and that whatever they do does not help in the situation. For instance, a person with extreme shyness in social situations may eventually realize that there is nothing he or she can do about eliminate the symptoms. But, eventually, he or she will develop a loss of sense of personal control over his or her shyness, thus, even enhancing her condition (Cherry, n.d.).
The idea behind this is because of the observation that when individuals were to be exposed to uncontrollable aversive events, they tend to find a reason why. Thus, the answers they come up become critical to understanding human helplessness and depression. These answers would then define their future expectations, thus, further affecting the individual’s behavior. Moreover, the answers would be characterized by three parameters; stable versus unstable, global versus specific, and internal versus external. Let’s take a look at a guy failing a math exam for example (Alloy et al., 1984).
A stable attribution is any attribution that would not change across time. In the example, if the individual argues that he failed the math exam because he is stupid, then, he is giving a stable attribution. Stupidity does not change across situations. On the other hand, unstable attribution is an attribution where the individual may change the future by changing the reason. For example, if he said that he failed because he did not study for the exam, then he’s giving an unstable attribution. He could study for the next exam, thus changing the expectation. An attribution becomes global if it affects many situations, and not just a particular situation. If he said that he failed because he’s stupid, that is true not just in math but also other fields, thus, that is a global attribution. But, if he failed because he is not good at math, then that is a specific attribution. An attribution becomes internal if it is factor made by the individual, while, it becomes external when the cause is outside the person’s control. Saying that he failed the exam because he is stupid is an internal attribution, but saying that he failed the exam because the exam was hard is an external attribution (Boyd, n.d.).
Cognitive Deficits in Depression
There exist two distinct correlations between depression and cognitive deficits. First, it should be noted that depressed individuals experience difficulties to tasks which involve concentration and memory. Second, depressed individuals are more likely to remember negative ideas (Gotlib and Joormann, 2010). Furthermore, cognitive deficits in episodic memory and learning of depressed individuals were found to be affecting explicit verbal and visual memory, while implicit memory tasks were found to be spared (Austin, Mitchell & Goodwin, 2001).
It is believed that the ability of an individual to process cognitive functions is limited. Meaning to say, there is a capacity when it comes to cognitive operations. Moreover, it is assumed that depression either occupies part of this capacity, or reduces the resources available for cognitive operations. This hypothesis explains the first correlation of depression and cognitive deficits (Gotlib and Joormann, 2010).
Difficulty in concentrating is considered one of the symptoms of depression. Moreover, lots of studies suggest that one of the effects of depression is memory impairment. However, it should be noted that studies suggest that depression may have an increased risk of memory impairment to tasks where attention is not constrained, increased cognitive effort is required, or attention tend to focus on personal concerns and other ideas rather than relevant ideas to the task. In other words, cognitive deficits could be eliminated by giving instructions that are not likely to cause memory impairment such as focusing attention to the task and not allowing thoughts that are irrelevant to the task. Indeed, by giving such instructions, no deficit was found in a group of participants who were depressed (Gotlib and Joormann, 2010).
Needless to say, depressed people can perform on tasks similar to how non-depressed individuals perform, but, still, they have difficulties performing on tasks requiring own initiative in unconstrained situations. Furthermore, this idea suggests that the removal of the opportunity of a depressed individual to ponder also removes memory impairment on tasks. This further suggests why tasks that are unconstrained eventually lead to impaired performance (Gotlib and Joormann, 2010).
Conclusion
In conclusion, there exists an apparent connection between cognition (operation and function) and depression and its characteristics (severity and symptoms). Series of studies confirmed these observations. It is important to emphasize that cognition is influenced by past memory and information, and so, understanding how depressed individuals think focuses on their past experiences. Therefore, the foundation of cognitive theories of depression states that existing memory representations, or schemas, affect how people perceive the environment. Thus, since depressed individuals are found to have negative schemas, they tend to ignore positive information from the environment, exaggerate on negative events and information, and engage in overgeneralization. Also, there exists a correlation between amount and severity of schemas and severity of depression and depressive symptoms.
First, there are three main dysfunctional beliefs that are present in individuals with depression. These three dysfunctional beliefs comprise the negative cognitive triad. These three themes are: “I am inadequate or defective”, “All of my experiences will be a defeat or failure”, and “My future is hopeless”. On the other hand, three irrational beliefs influence depression of individuals. These three irrational beliefs are: “I must be competent in everything I do, or I am worthless”, “People must treat me considerately, or they are terrible people”, “The world must always bring happiness, or I will die.” Depression is an effect of learned helplessness. The attribution theory explains the cognition of people with developed helplessness, and proved that the reasons they blame for the stressful events have a significant connection to helplessness. People giving global and stable attributions are more likely to feel helpless, while internal attributions cause loss of self-esteem. In the end, helplessness could be prevented by incorporating successful events and improving the perspective to stressful events.
Lastly, cognitive deficits are found in individuals with depression. Depressed individuals have difficulties in information processing, attention and memory operations. Also, depression makes individuals to focus on negative information. And so, information processing are biased towards information that are negative. Difficulty in cognitive functions is explained by the idea that cognitive operations are limited, and depression occupies part of this capacity, or reduces available resources for cognitive operations. Depression increases the risk of memory impairment to tasks where attention is not constrained, increased cognitive effort is required, or attention tend to focus on personal concerns and other ideas rather than relevant ideas to the task. Thus, memory impairment can be prevented by manipulating instructions for tasks.
References
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