The research examined how children’s attention to emotional expressions changes alongside depressive symptoms over time.
Scientists found that the relationship was different depending on whether the children’s mothers had a history of major depressive disorder.
Researchers from Binghamton University’s Mood Disorders Institute followed 242 children and their mothers for two years.
The participants were assessed every six months, allowing the researchers to examine whether changes in children’s attention to emotional faces were connected to later changes in depressive symptoms.
During the assessments, children viewed pairs of faces on a computer screen.
One face had a neutral expression while the other showed happiness, sadness or anger. Eye-tracking technology was used to measure which face attracted the children’s attention and how long they looked at it.
Previous research has linked depression with greater attention to sad faces, but scientists have not been certain about the direction of the relationship.
It has remained unclear whether paying more attention to negative emotional information contributes to depression or whether depressive symptoms cause changes in attention.
The new study attempted to examine both possibilities by looking at how attention patterns and depressive symptoms predicted each other across different time points.
Researchers described this two-way relationship as an important part of the study.
Among children whose mothers had a history of major depressive disorder, increasing depressive symptoms were associated with greater attention to sad faces.
As their symptoms increased, these children appeared to have more difficulty shifting their attention away from expressions of sadness.
Researchers suggested that children who already have a higher familial risk of depression may become particularly sensitive to sadness when they experience depressive symptoms themselves.
A different pattern appeared among children whose mothers had no history of major depression.
When depressive symptoms increased in this group, the children did not show greater attention to sad faces. Instead, they paid less attention to happy expressions.
The researchers said this may indicate that depression can affect emotional attention through different pathways depending on a child’s underlying level of familial risk.
The team is continuing to follow the children as they enter adolescence, a period when the risk of depression increases.
The researchers hope to determine whether the attention patterns identified in childhood are associated with depression diagnoses later in life.
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