Attentional biases for sad faces in offspring of mothers with a history of major depression: trajectories of change from childhood to adolescence

Background Theorists have proposed that the way children process social–emotional information may serve as a mechanism of risk for the intergenerational transmission of depression. There is growing evidence that infants and children of mothers with a history of major depressive disorder (MDD) during the child's life exhibit attentional avoidance of sad faces, which has been proposed as an early emerging emotion regulation strategy. In contrast, there is clear evidence that at‐risk and depressed adolescents and adults exhibit difficulty disengaging attention from sad faces. Methods Seeking to link these two literatures, the current U.S.‐based study used eye tracking within the context of an accelerated longitudinal design to assess attentional biases in 8–14‐year‐old offspring of mothers with a history MDD during the child's life ( n = 123) or no history of MDD ( n = 119) every six months for two years, allowing us to map trajectories of attention from age 8 to 16. Results Mother MDD history moderated age‐based changes in children's gaze duration to sad ( t [240] = 2.44, p = .02), but not happy ( t [240] = 0.11, p = .91) or angry ( t [240] = 0.67, p = .50), faces. Consistent our hypotheses, offspring of mothers with MDD exhibited significantly less attention to sad faces than offspring of never depressed mothers before age 8.5 but significantly more attention to sad faces after age 14.5, which was due to an increase in gaze duration to sad faces from childhood to adolescence among offspring of mothers with MDD ( t [122] = 5.44, p < .001) but not among offspring of never depressed mothers ( t [118] = 1.49, p = .14). Conclusions It appears that the form, and perhaps function, of attentional bias may shift across development in at‐risk youth. To the extent that this is true, it has significant implications not only for theories of the intergenerational transmission of depression risk but also for prevention and early intervention efforts designed to reduce this risk.