Negative Interpretation Bias in Individuals with Depressive Symptoms

Negative interpretations are a central component of cognitive models of depression. Previous research on interpretation biases in depression has relied on self-report measures. Self-report measures have limited validity because they may measure a response bias rather than a cognitive bias. To overcome this limitation, recent investigations have used response latencies as a measure of interpretation bias with mixed results. We examined interpretation bias using a modified word sentence association paradigm (Beard and Amir in Cogn Therapy Res 33:406-415, 2009). In comparison with individuals without dysphoria, dysphoric individuals were significantly faster to endorse the association between negative words and ambiguous sentences. These results suggest that negative interpretations are primed in depression, suggesting that training towards benign interpretations may have therapeutic value.