Cognitive vulnerability to depression: Attention and memory biases in never-depressed daughters of depressed mothers

Cognitive models of depression posit that the disorder is caused by vulnerabilities within an individual that interact with negative life events to cause clinically significant depression. Thus, individuals known to be at high risk statistically for depression are expected to possess evidence of negative cognitive functioning, even before they show overt symptoms of the disorder. One group who is known to be at risk statistically for developing depression is the offspring of depressed parents. Although studies of the cognitive functioning in this group have suggested support for cognitive models, to date, no study has evaluated never-depressed offspring of depressed parents. In addition, although these studies have included adolescents, other major predictors of depression in adolescence, such as puberty, have not been adequately investigated. The present study examined self-reported cognitive functioning, as well as attention and memory processing while under a negative mood, in never-depressed girls with never-, past- and currently depressed mothers. For girls in early stages of puberty, never-depressed daughters of depressed mothers exhibited more negatively biased memory processes relative to their lower-risk counterparts. They did not differ in self-reported cognitive vulnerability measures. For girls in late stages of puberty, daughters of currently and past-depressed mothers did not show evidence of greater cognitive vulnerability on any measure compared to their lower risk counterparts. These findings indicate that cognitive vulnerabilities exist in high-risk girls in early stages of puberty, and suggest that puberty plays a role in vulnerability in the daughters of depressed mothers. Future studies of cognitive vulnerability in adolescence should include pubertal status.