Cited by 2,420Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive ProcessesNeural and Behavioral Psychology StudiesTreatment of Major Depression

Cognition and Depression: Current Status and Future Directions

Open access
Gotlib, Ian H., Joormann, Jutta·2010·Annual Review of Clinical Psychology

Abstract

Cognitive theories of depression posit that people's thoughts, inferences, attitudes, and interpretations, and the way in which they attend to and recall information, can increase their risk for depression. Three mechanisms have been implicated in the relation between biased cognitive processing and the dysregulation of emotion in depression: inhibitory processes and deficits in working memory, ruminative responses to negative mood states and negative life events, and the inability to use positive and rewarding stimuli to regulate negative mood. In this review, we present a contemporary characterization of depressive cognition and discuss how different cognitive processes are related not only to each other, but also to emotion dysregulation, the hallmark feature of depression. We conclude that depression is characterized by increased elaboration of negative information, by difficulties disengaging from negative material, and by deficits in cognitive control when processing negative information. We discuss treatment implications of these conclusions and argue that the study of cognitive aspects of depression must be broadened by investigating neural and genetic factors that are related to cognitive dysfunction in this disorder. Such integrative investigations should help us gain a more comprehensive understanding of how cognitive and biological factors interact to affect the onset, maintenance, and course of depression.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1146/annurev.clinpsy.121208.131305

Cites

184 of 184 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Such neural network alterations are posited to contribute to impaired regulatory control of stimulus-driven affective processing, producing rigid negative biases evident across a wide range of implicit information processing domains (e.g., negative appraisals of self, environment, future; preferential attention and memory for negative stimuli).

    “Such neural network alterations are posited to contribute to impaired regulatory control of stimulus-driven affective processing 7,45 , producing rigid negative biases evident across a wide range of implicit information processing domains (e.g., negative appraisals of self, the environment, and the future 46 ; preferential attention and memory for negative stimuli 45,47 ).”

    From Neuroplasticity in cognitive and psychological mechanisms of depression: an integrative model (2020) · cites this paper as [45]

    Split into 2 atoms — 1 confirmed, 1 partially supported, 0 disputed, 0 misattributed, 0 unverifiable. Expand the claim to see per-atom verdicts.

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
  • Attention shows valence-specific alterations in depressed patients including attentional preference for dysphoric stimuli and biases away from positive stimuli.

    “Attention, which acts as an initial filter on the information entering conscious awareness, shows valence-specific alterations in depressed patients including attentional preference for dysphoric stimuli and biases away from positive stimuli 45,47,83 .”

    From Neuroplasticity in cognitive and psychological mechanisms of depression: an integrative model (2020) · cites this paper as [45]

    In “Perception and Attention” (page not provided), the review reports a bias toward negative material in depression, particularly difficulty disengaging once it has captured attention. It does not establish a bias away from positive stimuli, and it cautions that evidence for faster initial orienting toward negative stimuli is mixed. (LLM, conf=0.85)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
  • Major depression is characterized by a strong disturbance in working memory.

    “major depression is characterized by a strong disturbance in WM (Banich et al., 2009; Foland-Ross & Gotlib, 2012; Gotlib & Joormann, 2010; Joormann, 2018; Kaiser et al., 2015).”

    From Baseline-dependent effect of dopamine’s precursor L-tyrosine on working memory gating but not updating (2020) · cites this paper as Gotlib & Joormann, 2010

    The Inhibition and Cognitive Control section reports difficulties removing and manipulating negative material in working memory in depressed participants. But the Cognitive Deficits in Depression section describes mixed results on general working-memory tasks, including studies finding few or no differences. The source therefore supports a more specific disturbance, not the unqualified claim of a strong disturbance in working memory overall. Page numbers were not supplied in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.86)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
  • Objective measures of neuro-cognition are impacted in depression.

    “Additionally, we used a multidimensional approach to evaluate trial outcomes; symptom assessments were complemented with evaluation of change in subjective mental health behaviors and quality of life, as well as change in objective measures of neuro-cognition that are impacted in depression [31–37].”
  • Depression can be associated with cognitive deficits.

    “Notably, while depression can be associated with cognitive deficits [31–37]”

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 2

  1. Baddeley AD 1986 Working Memory Oxford, UK Clarendon
  2. Joormann J Levens S Gotlib IH 2009b Manipulating emotional material in working memory: depression-associated deficits Manuscr. in prep. PMC11862919 21742932

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Gotlib, I. H., & Joormann, J.
Affiliations
  • Stanford University (US)
  • University of Miami (US)
Venue
Annual Review of Clinical Psychology
Published
2010-03-01
Volume
6
Issue
1
Pages
285-312
ISSN
  • 1548-5943 (ISSN-L)
  • 1548-5951
OpenAlex
W2110004174
Cited by
2,420
References
179
Citations by year
2026: 162 · 2025: 174 · 2024: 163 · 2023: 161 · 2022: 164 · 2021: 184 · 2020: 151 · 2019: 191 · 2018: 155 · 2017: 196 · 2016: 154 · 2015: 161 · 2014: 128 · 2013: 107 · 2012: 83
FWCI
10.53
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Annual Review of Clinical Psychology (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
Funders
National Institute of Mental Health (R01MH074849, R01MH059259)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Pharmacology › Treatment of Major Depression
Keywords
depression, cognitive theories of depression, depressive cognitions, emotional dysregulation, cognitive control, rumination, working memory deficits, inhibitory processes, reward processing, therapeutic implications, genetic factors, neural factors
MeSH terms
Cognition Disorders, Depressive Disorder, Major, Major Depressive Disorder, Humans, Life Change Events, Mental Processes, Neuropsychological Tests, Psychological Theory, Severity of Illness Index, Prevalence

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review