Sticky criticism? Affective and neural responses to parental criticism and praise in adolescents with depression

Background: Parent-adolescent interactions, particularly parental criticism and praise, have previously been identified as factors relevant to self-concept development and, when negative, to adolescent depression. Yet, whether adolescents with depression show aberrant emotional and neural reactivity to parental criticism and praise is understudied.

Methods: Adolescents with depression (n = 20) and healthy controls (n = 59) received feedback supposedly provided by their mother or father in the form of negative ('untrustworthy'), neutral ('chaotic'), and positive ('respectful') personality evaluations while in an MRI-scanner. After each feedback word, adolescents reported their mood. Beforehand, adolescents had rated whether these personality evaluations matched their self-views.

Results: In both groups, mood decreased after criticism and increased after praise. Adolescents with depression reported blunted mood responses after praise, whereas there were no mood differences after criticism. Neuroimaging analyses revealed that adolescents with depression (v. healthy controls) exhibited increased activity in response to criticism in the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex, temporal pole, hippocampus, and parahippocampal gyrus. Praise consistent with adolescents' self-views improved mood independent of depression status, while criticism matching self-views resulted in smaller mood increases in adolescents with depression (v. healthy controls). Exploratory analyses indicated that adolescents with depression recalled criticism (v. praise) more.

Conclusions: Adolescents with depression might be especially attentive to parental criticism, as indexed by increased sgACC and hippocampus activity, and memorize this criticism more. Together with lower positive impact of praise, these findings suggest that cognitive biases in adolescent depression may affect how parental feedback is processed, and may be fed into their self-views.

研究背景：既往研究已证实，亲子互动——尤其是父母的批评与表扬——与青少年自我概念发展密切相关，而负面的亲子互动还与青少年抑郁存在关联。但目前针对抑郁青少年对父母批评与表扬的异常情绪及神经反应的相关研究仍较为匮乏。

研究方法：本研究招募了20名抑郁青少年与59名健康对照青少年，让他们在磁共振扫描仪（MRI-scanner）中接收据称来自其母亲或父亲的人格评价反馈，反馈类型分为三类：负面（‘不可信赖’）、中性（‘混乱无序’）与正面（‘受人尊重’）。在每一条反馈词汇呈现后，青少年需报告自身的情绪状态。实验前，青少年需先评定这些人格评价是否符合其自我认知。

研究结果：两组青少年在接收批评后情绪均有所下降，接收表扬后情绪均有所上升。抑郁青少年在接收表扬后的情绪反应出现钝化，而在接收批评后的情绪变化则无显著组间差异。神经影像学分析显示，相较于健康对照青少年，抑郁青少年在接收批评时，其膝下前扣带回皮层（subgenual anterior cingulate cortex）、颞极（temporal pole）、海马体（hippocampus）以及海马旁回（parahippocampal gyrus）的激活程度显著升高。与青少年自我认知相符的表扬可提升其情绪状态，且该效应不受抑郁状态影响；而与自我认知相符的批评则会导致抑郁青少年的情绪提升幅度小于健康对照青少年。探索性分析显示，抑郁青少年对批评的记忆量显著高于对表扬的记忆量。

研究结论：抑郁青少年对父母的批评可能存在特异性注意偏向，这一点可通过其膝下前扣带回皮层与海马体的激活增强得以印证，且他们对批评的记忆也更为深刻。结合表扬对其产生的积极影响较弱这一现象，本研究结果提示，青少年抑郁患者的认知偏差可能会影响其对父母反馈的加工过程，并进一步作用于其自我认知体系。