Characteristics of attention bias in adolescents with major depression disorder

ObjectiveTo investigate the characteristics of attention bias for emotional face images in adolescents with major depression disorder.

MethodsA total of 65 adolescents with major depression disorder who met the ICD-10 diagnostic criteria were recruited as the depresson group, and 55 healthy adolescents matched with depressive disorder group in terms of gender, age and education level were recruited as control group.The attention bias task was evaluated by point detection paradigm.

ResultsThe attention response of neutral and negative images in depression group were both significantly higher than those in control group(P<0.01), and the attention bias value of depresson group was significantly higher than that of control group(P<0.01), but there was no statistical significance in the accuracy of attention response between the two groups(P>0.05).In depresson group, the negative attention response was significantly higher than neutral attention response(P<0.05), while there was no significant difference between the negative and neutral attention response in control group(P>0.05).HAMD scale score was positively correlated with neural and negative attention response in depresson group(r=0.315, r=0.413, P<0.01).

ConclusionsAdolescents with major depression disorder have attention bias effect for negative emotional images.