Specificity of information processing styles to depressive symptoms in youth psychiatric inpatients

Although information processing has been widely studied with depressed adul ts, little emphasis has been placed on the specificity of resultant finding s to depression, as opposed to other psychological disorders. Analogously, even less effort has been directed toward examining the information process ing styles of depressed children and adolescents. The present study investi gated the specificity of information processing styles to depression and an xiety among 58 youth psychiatric inpatients. To assess information processi ng, we used a self-referent encoding task, in which participants were prese nted with positive and negative adjectives; participants were asked whether these adjectives described them or not, and were then tested on recall of the adjectives. After controlling for age and gender, lower rates of positi ve adjective endorsement and lower rates of positive adjective recall were found to be associated with depression, but not anxiety. Additionally, nega tive adjective endorsement was associated with anxiety symptoms. These resu lts suggest specific cognitive features of depressive symptoms.