The Self-referential Processing Mechanism In Individuals With Depressive Tendencies

Self-relevant information has significant advantages in cognitive processing,manifested as more precise and robust memory and faster attention capture.Research has found that even briefly and incidentally associated items are considered part of the self(i.e.,extended self).In the Eastern cultural context,the self-schema also includes the mother,and therefore mother-relevant information enjoys processing advantages similar to self-relevant information.Studies have shown that individuals with a tendency toward depression tend to focus their attention on their core self,but it is unclear whether they include briefly associated objects and mother within their self-boundaries.This study aims to explore the self-processing characteristics and self-boundaries of individuals with a tendency toward depression: Experiment 1 uses the oddball paradigm in event-related potential technology,with four levels of self-relevant names(self,mother,domestic celebrity,and foreign celebrity)as stimulus materials to investigate the self-reference processing characteristics of individuals with a tendency toward depression,with a particular focus on whether mother reference in an Eastern context is included in the self-category of individuals with a tendency toward depression.The results showed that both groups of subjects exhibited faster stimulus sensitivity and attention speed to their own name in the early component P2;In the cognitive mid-stage,both groups showed a larger N2 wave induced by their own name,but the depression-prone group exhibited weaker perception ability to stimuli;In the late stage of cognitive processing,from the results of the P3 component,both self-name and mother name induced larger P3 wave amplitude,but this advantage disappeared in the depression-prone group.Experiment2 uses the silent reading paradigm with emotional words of different valences(positive,negative,and neutral)as materials to investigate the cognitive processing characteristics of self-related emotional stimuli in individuals with a tendency toward depression.The results showed that in the EPN component of the posterior brain,normal individuals exhibited a bias toward self-related positive words,but this preference was not present in individuals with a tendency toward depression;In the late-stage LPP component of processing,individuals with a tendency toward depression exhibited deeper cognitive processing of negative words.Experiment 3required subjects to assign items to "self" or "others" based on random color prompts,and then used a recognition task and a visual crowding task to test the effects of brief self-relevance on memory and peripheral attention.The results showed that both the depression-prone and normal groups exhibited memory advantages for items assigned to themselves in terms of accuracy,but the depression-prone group did not show an advantage in terms of response time.Unlike normal individuals,individuals with a tendency toward depression showed no significant differences in recognizing items belonging to themselves and others in the visual crowding task.The experimental results of this study show that although individuals with a tendency toward depression have a certain memory advantage for briefly self-attributed items,the self-referential effect on peripheral presented items disappears,indicating a lower degree of self-referential processing.In addition,individuals with a tendency toward depression do not include the mother in their self-schema and focus more on their core self,demonstrating the singularity and absolutization of the self-concept.At the same time,when processing self-related emotional stimuli,individuals with a tendency toward depression exhibit impaired selective attention function and show a negative bias.