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Nonverbal communication, response to performance feedback and psychophysiological activity in depression

University of British Columbia

The present study evaluated selected aspects of recent behavioural, cognitive, and psychophysiological theories of depression. Of major concern was Lewinsohn's suggestion that a deficit in social-skill may be a critical determinant of depressive behaviour. An analysis of the concept of social skill suggests that it may involve two component processes: 1) the ability to emit situationally appropriate behaviours that others can identify and respond to discriminatively, and 2) the ability to identify and respond discriminatively to the situationally-appropriate behaviour of others. It follows from Lewinsohn's position that depressed subjects should exhibit deficits in either or both of these processes. In order to evaluate this hypothesis, three groups of subjects <— depressed, nondepressed psychiatric controls, and normal controls — participated in a two-part experiment. In the first part, which was designed to elicit various forms of facial expressive behaviour, subjects were exposed to a differential classical conditioning procedure, in which one CS was followed by presentation of a "pleasant" pictorial UCS, another CS was followed by an aversive auditory UCS, and a third CS was presented with no consequating event. Videotapes were made of subjects' facial expressions during CS presentation and continuous recordings of subjects' skin conductance and heart rate were taken. In the second part of the experiment, subjects observed the videotapes from the first session of 3 other subjects, one from each group of subjects. In this session, subjects'were required to guess, on the basis of changes in the facial expressions of the subjects observed, which of the 3 types of conditioning trial the observed subject was undergoing. During this session, subjects also estimated their anticipated performance immediately prior to undergoing each of the three sets of judgements. Results of the judgemental task indicated that depressed subjects were the most difficult of all subjects to accurately judge and that this deficit did not seem to be due to response predispositions on the part of depressed subjects. This finding was interpreted as being consistent with Lewinsohn's social-skill hypothesis, but inconsistent with Ferster's notion that the depressive is a poor observer of the environment. The three groups' estimations of their anticipated performance did not differ systematically, thus failing to support Beck's specualtion that the depressive is characterized by a generalized set of negative expectations regarding the outcome of future events. More importantly, changes in subjects' verbal ratings of their anticipated performance were highly correlated with the discrepancy between anticipated and actual performance on previous trials for all groups. This finding was inconsistent with predictions from Seligman's "learned-helplessness" model of depression. Finally, psychophysiological data indicated that depressives were electrodermally hyperresponsive in comparison with other subjects, and also exhibited an elevated tonic heart-rate. These findings were interpreted as being inconsistent with speculation that the depressive is refractory to stimulation.

Text

2010-02-12

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/20145

Psychology

University of British Columbia

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