Abstract
OBJECTIVES: This study investigated social-reward learning disorders in individuals with depressive symptoms by examining attentional resources to be captured by social-value related conditioned stimuli. METHODS: We utilized a modified additional singleton paradigm in which the prominent distractor was characterized by a stimuli associated with large- or small- social value. In Study 1, 49 participants with minimal depressive symptoms(BDI-II ≤ 13 & dimension of depressive symptoms on the SCL-90-R ≤ 2.10) and 49 with obvious depressive symptoms(BDI-II ≥ 14 & dimension of depressive symptoms on the SCL-90-R > 2.10) were included in the control and depressed groups, respectively. They were asked to find the response target and make a judgment related to the target by conducting a keypress response. In Study 2, 55 participants with obvious depressive symptoms and 54 with minimal depressive symptoms were asked to fixate on the target as quickly as possible. RESULTS: In the keypress response task, regarding the influence on response time, the interference effect of large-value distractors in the depressed group was significantly less than that in the control group. In the fixation-response task, compared with the control group, participants of the depressed group also showed less bias of oculomotor capture by social-value distractors. CONCLUSIONS: For individuals with depressive symptoms, insufficient interference of social-value distractors was revealed both in the manual response and eye-tracking tasks. Those with depressive symptoms displayed deficits in attentional resources to be captured by social-value related stimuli.