On the Use of Analog Populations

The preceding discussion has considered depression as a state in which persistent negative information processing biases stem from overlearned rumination on some negative loss event. Such an etiology may not be characteristic of all depressions, and thus, the proposed delays and facilitations may not occur on these tasks for all depressed people. Similarly, there is little reason to believe that all people who have overlearned some negative loss event, will meet formal DSM IV criteria for major depression on a particular day. Thus, an experiment intending to illustrate biases of people with persistent negative moods having cognitively mediated features (as measured, e.g., by the BDI) might be as or more successful in finding results for a population of people screened for negative mood states, as for DSM-diagnosable depression. While Kendall et al.'s (1987) cautions regarding the identification of such individuals as clinically depressed based solely on their performance on self report measures cannot be over-estimated, the following experiments and preceding literature review makes no claims for all depressed people as diagnosed by DSM-IV criteria. As such, a multi-method, time-lagged assessment of persistent negative mood involving self-report measures such as the BDI and General Behavior Inventory (GBI; Depue et al., 1981) will be used in the following experiments to establish inclusion in a ``depressed'' group. Similarly, other measures of rumination on negativity such as Exner's (1973) Self Focus Sentence Completion Scale will be employed. The determination of previous depression or cognitively mediated depressive features is more difficult to do based on such self-report questionnaires, and as such, a SCID interview was performed to establish inclusion in a ``previously depressed'' group.