Learning, cognition and depression
Our work examines the processes involved in human learning and the factors that can affect learning, particularly in those who are depressed.
The perception of ‘having control’ over ones life and environment is considered to be important for positive mental health.
Depressed people have traditionally been characterised as particularly realistic about how much control they perceive that they have over things, whereas the non-depressed are thought of as overly optimistic.
Depressive realism
Our findings showed that depressive realism was in fact an empirical illusion. Depressed people appeared to be realistic only in some circumstances because they failed to integrate context or background information into their perception of control.
Our research suggests that depressed people experience impaired ability to process context information and that this impacts on how they learn about control.
Click on this link for relevant press coverage about depressive realism.
Context in this sense can refer to location, time and task-relevant information.
We have developed perception of control tasks involving virtual locations, in order to examine location aspects of context processing in both depressed and non-depressed participants.
A related project, conducted by Chase and his colleagues, checks for context processing impairments in tryptophan depleted participants.
Time
Time constitutes the fabric on which the tapestry of everyday life takes place.
When people are well, happy and having fun, ‘time flies’. However, sadness, boredom and depressed mood, for example, can make the experience of time passing seem slow and even painful.
Time perception is also important in learning about control. A sense of delay or immediacy between ones actions and subsequent outcomes can make them seem independent or causally related.
One of our current projects carried out both at the University of Hertfordshire and UCL examines time perception in depressed and non-depressed participants using psychophysical methods.
Kornbrot and Msetfi were also co-organisers of the annual conference of the International Society for Psychophysics held in St Albans in July 2006.
Cognitive context
Task-relevant information, which must be maintained in order to ensure appropriate task performance, is sometimes referred to as a ‘cognitive context’.
Although several lines of evidence point towards difficulties in processing the cognitive context in depression – our recent study (coming soon) is the first to provide evidence that mild to moderately depressed students have difficulties in maintaining task-relevant information for longer periods of time. The use of blended and e-learning is currently a topic of considerable interest in higher education.
For a number of years, Msetfi and Kornbrot have studied how easily accessible, online information acquisition methods might be usefully employed in learning and teaching – particularly statistics and methodology.
Several University-funded research projects have resulted, evidencing the benefits of: using relevant student data in teaching demonstrations (Kornbrot with Msetfi) and giving students regular individualised, semi-automated feedback on assignments (Msetfi, Hajilou with Kornbrot).