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Understanding the Cognitive Aspects of Depression 

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When we experience depression, we may notice changes in our overall cognitive functioning, where we may have difficulty paying attention and concentrating, filtering out distractions, or remembering things. Research often shows that our thought patterns and the way they affect and get affected by our emotions play a key role in the emergence and maintenance of depression. Particularly, our unique thinking patterns, including thoughts and beliefs, the meaning and interpretations we make about ourselves, events, and people, as well as our unique way of paying attention and remembering them, can shape our experience with depression. In this sketch, we’ll look at some cognitive aspects of depression and how it may show up in our lives.

Over-reliance on negative information in depression

One interesting consistent finding in depression research is that when we experience depression, our minds show a greater preference toward negative information. This negative information can look like remembering negative events more often or having a much more pronounced pessimistic view of ourselves, the world, the past, and the future.

For example, when people experience depression, the content of their thoughts becomes more negative compared to when they don’t experience depression or compared to people who don’t experience depression. We may realize that the conclusions we arrive at about ourselves and past or future events can be more negative, eventhough there is not always evidence to support such conclusions.

Interestingly, when we experience depression, our minds don’t only induce negative thoughts or show a preference for recalling negative events, but also show a greater preference for paying attention to new negative information over positive and neutral information, which can cultivate new inner and external experiences that also don’t feel good for us and keep us in unhelpful thinking cycles.

More specifically, our brains seem to over-rely on negative information during depression in the following ways:

  • Selective attention paying to negative information compared to neutral or positive ones
  • Selective recalling negative memories more than neutral or positive ones
  • Difficulty shifting away from negative information
  • Interpreting something ambiguous as negative more frequently

As noted below, some important theories about depression also highlight such overreliance on negative information in depression (Joormann & Arditte, 2014):

Helplessness model: this model suggests that some aspects of depression emerge and continue due to perceiving ourselves as helpless and not having control over events in our lives. These types of expectations can involve a cognitive bias where we tend to assign the causes of negative events to causes that are beyond our reach or unchangeable, eventhough it’s not always the case.

Schema model: This model suggests that our existing memories shape how we perceive and interpret information we encounter later in life, almost like colored glasses we see life through. For example, when we experience depression, external stress might be activating schemas, or memories that involve themes of worthlessness, rejection, abandonment, loneliness, and the like. Since memories can guide our internal thoughts, can induce new thoughts, and can even determine the way we pay attention (e.g., memory-attention relationship), activation of such schemas or memories might be making us more selective, or preferential, in paying attention to or internalizing negative events and information, which eventually can contribute to a more pessimistic view of ourselves and others.

Resource allocation model: this model particularly tries to explain the observation that people who experience depression may have trouble concentrating and remembering information. Interestingly, while people who experience depression report issues in concentrating and remembering, this is more for positive and neutral information, and they simultaneously find it easier to focus on negative thoughts and remember negative events.  According to this model, because our cognitive capacities are not endless, overusing these resources on one task might cause problems in others. For example, some difficulties during depression may be due to the fact that our minds are overoccupied with negative thoughts, worries, and the like.

These models (and the research studies they are based on) show us that understanding the content, onset, and patterns of our thinking styles, especially our negative and unhelpful thinking patterns, is not only a result of our experience with depression but some may also act as factors that make us more vulnerable to experiencing depression, revealing the nuanced relationships between our thinking styles and overall wellbeing.

Negative thinking – negative mood cycles

When we experience depression, how we regulate our emotions and recover from negative moods is also greatly affected. As explained above, when we experience depression, there is often an overreliance on negative information, where negative thoughts and interpretations can become more easily activated and harder to inhibit or shift away. Studies often show that this overreliance on negative information can also affect our mood and emotions, and our mood can, in turn, affect it, which can make us feel stuck in endless cycles of negative thoughts and low mood.

For example, this effect shows up in our memory system, where remembering certain events triggers often memory-congruent feelings. For example, remembering negative memories can make us feel bad; similarly, remembering memories with desirable details can have a repairing and supporting effect. Similarly, our current mood can determine which memories we remember and how often.

This type of returning to negative information can be one of the factors that induce and maintain the negative or low mood that we experience in depression. Similarly, having a low or negative mood can also induce more negative thinking, creating a cycle in which negative thoughts increase negative emotions, while negative emotions make it easier for more negative thoughts to come to mind.

How can therapy help?

While it’s true that our thoughts and emotions are interconnected and influence each other even in the absence of depression, the tendency to over-rely on negative information that characterizes depression can make this relationship feel more limiting and rigid.

These cognitive aspects of depression, including overreliance on negative information and the cyclic relationship between negative thinking styles and negative mood, are often targeted and addressed by many evidence-based therapies, including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), and more. 

These approaches use techniques to interrupt these loops, increasing our chance of processing and internalizing neutral or positive information, or remembering neutral or positive memories instead of over-relying on negative ones, which can, in turn, help improve our mood.

Takeaways:

  • Depression can affect, and be affected by, our overall cognitive functioning, including attention, concentration, memory, and how we interpret ourselves, others, and the world.
  • When we experience depression, we often show a unique cognitive pattern where we over-rely on negative information, which makes negative thoughts, memories, and interpretations easier to focus on and remember, and harder to shift away from.
  • Since negative thoughts and low mood can reinforce each other, when we experience depression, we often experience self-reinforcing, negative thought-mood cycles that can make depression feel harder to shift.
  • Evidence-based therapies such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) often use techniques that aim to help break these cycles and create more space for neutral and positive thoughts, memories, and experiences.

References & further reading:

  • Joormann, J., & Arditte, K. (2014). Cognitive aspects of depression. In I. H. Gotlib & C. L. Hammen (Eds.), Handbook of depression (3rd ed., pp. 259–276). The Guilford Press.
  • Hollon, S. D., & Dimidjian, S. (2014). Cognitive and behavioral treatment of depression. In I. H. Gotlib & C. L. Hammen (Eds.), Handbook of depression (3rd ed., pp. 513–531). The Guilford Press.
  • Kube, T. (2023). Biased belief updating in depression. Clinical Psychology Review, 103, 102298. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2023.102298
  • Chen, L., Wang, Q., & Xu, T. (2022). Working memory function in patients with major depression disorder: A narrative review. Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy, 30(2), 281–293. https://doi.org/10.1002/cpp.2811
  • LeMoult, J., & Gotlib, I. H. (2018). Depression: A cognitive perspective. Clinical Psychology Review, 69, 51–66. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2018.06.008
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