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Dunn et al (2004)
 * 1) 1. Compared 25 people diagnosed with current MDD and 25 never-depressed control participants. These two categories participated in an affective picture task, which is a series of emotional and neutral images that have detailed normative rating data. They were shown 10 images in the categories: positive, fearful, sad, and neutral.
 * 2) 2. General findings: showed significant difference in response to positive images but no clear difference in response to negative stimuli.
 * 3) 3. Depressed group would be characterized by self-reported pleasantness (valence) and arousal ratings to positive pictures compared to control group; they are also characterized by increased sadness as well as decreased happiness to positive images. They may associate unpleasantness towards positive images related to a lack of positive reinforcement and deficit in approach behavior. Also, emotional experience in depressed group may be shaped by both response to external visual stimuli and internal ruminations of past losses and failures.

Joorman/Gotlib (2007)
 * 1) 1. 3 groups participated: 26 MDD, 23 RMD (currently remitted), and 19 NC. They were shown a set of 20 faces, each expressing happy, sad, and neutral emotions selected from the MacArthur Network Face Stimuli Set. The images showed an equal number of male and female faces, an equal dispersion of emotions, and an equal number of different ethnicities. Used the dot-probe test to see the response/attentive time it took to subconsciously show attention to a certain emotion displayed.
 * 2) 2. Current/formerly depressed students selectively attended to sad face images. Control students selectively avoided the sad faces and oriented to happy faces. This supported the hypothesis that depression and recovering depressives leads to an attention bias in processing emotional faces.
 * 3) 3. We cannot tell if the findings of attention biases are state markers of a depressive episode or a trait-like characteristic of individuals who are vulnerable to experiencing depressive episodes. For depressives, past perception, memory, and environment play a large role in their gravitation toward negative images—they may perceive certain positive images as worse than they really are.

Ilardi et al (2007)
 * 1) 1. 51/1800 students were left after a long elimination process: depressed group was 16 (4 men and 12 women); the previously depressed group was 15 (7 men and 8 women); and the never depressed control group was 20 (8 men and 12 women). Participants we given an ERP (electroencephalographic) test that measures the real-time brain activity in response to specific sensory stimuli. They were asked to read each word presented on the computer screen and to judge if this word was either negative or neutral in valence. It was a visually presented word stimulus on the screen for 300ms; there were 300 words per participant.
 * 2) 2. Only the depressed participants showed a reliable P300 component (as reflected by a larger positive wave in response to rare trails as compared to frequent trails), which was maximal over the expected scalp locations. The purpose was to clarify the degree to which attentional impairment in depression is truly global and pervasive, rather than a mere reflection of a potential depressive information processing bias in which attentional function is fully intact with respect to negatively toned information, but selectively attenuated with respect to non-negative stimuli. Did not show evidence of increased attention selectively towards negative stimuli.
 * 3) 3. Depressed participants appear to be in a state-like, rather than trait-like, experience. Their biases could be dominated by themes of loss, abandonment, and failure observed in the domains of attention, explicit memory, implicit memory, and judgment. There is evidence of depressive cognitive impairment: an inability to concentrate and filter out distracting (negative) stimuli.


 * 1) 4. The two viewpoints on MDD patients shown is that they either view the world with optimism or pessimism. I don’t believe that either viewpoint is by choice. I support the conclusion that MDD people view the world in a cloudy state of mind, often associated with a negative demeanor; this distorted view has been a pervasive impairment on their attentional function. Past perception, memory, and experience forces MDD patients to view most everything as worse than it is in reality. This is also most likely influenced by the comorbidity amongst most MDD patients with generalized anxiety disorder—which can help develop a constant worrisome state of mind.