Depression changes what children notice in the faces around them, but the specific pattern depends on their family history. A new study from Binghamton University reveals that kids with a higher inherited risk become more focused on sadness, while lower-risk children lose some of their natural attention to happy expressions.
The Research
Researchers at Binghamton University’s Mood Disorders Institute, led by PhD student Kelly Gair and distinguished professor Brandon Gibb, tracked 242 children and their mothers over two years. Participants returned every six months for assessments. During each visit, children viewed pairs of faces on a screen — one neutral, one emotional (happy, sad, or angry). Eye-tracking technology measured which faces attracted the children’s attention and how long they focused on them.
Among children whose mothers had a history of major depressive disorder, increasing depressive symptoms were associated with greater attention to sad faces. “For those who are already at risk, the more these children experience depression themselves, the more they lose their ability to pull their attention away from the sad things around them,” Gibb said. In contrast, for children whose mothers had no depression history, rising depressive symptoms led them to spend less time looking at happy faces.
This is the first study to examine how depressive symptoms and attention biases influence each other over time in children. “We looked at the transactional relations between attentional biases and depressive symptoms,” Gair explained. The findings suggest that attention patterns may be both a contributor to and a consequence of depression.
Why It Matters
Your brain’s attention system is like a spotlight — it highlights what matters and filters out the rest. Depression can warp that spotlight, making you dwell on negative information while missing positive cues. This study shows that these changes can start in childhood, especially in families with a history of depression. Early detection could lead to interventions that retrain attention, potentially preventing full-blown depression.
What You Can Do
For parents, noticing shifts in your child’s emotional focus may be helpful. If a child seems unable to look away from sad faces or uninterested in happy ones, it could signal emerging depression. Consider talking to a mental health professional. Cognitive-behavioral therapy and attention bias modification exercises can help recalibrate the spotlight.
Source: ScienceDaily Mind & Brain
Curious about your own brain? Take our free adaptive IQ test or try 306 brain training levels.
