Table 1.
Case-control studies investigating differences in social cognitive performance between patients with major depressive disorder and controls.
| References | Aim | Method | N [MA ± SD; M:F] | Social cognition task | Mood diagnosis | Results |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| (A) STUDIES INDICATING SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ACUTELY DEPRESSED INDIVIDUALS AND HEALTHY CONTROLS | ||||||
| Anderson et al. (23) | To compare accuracy, discrimination, and bias in face recognition in current and remitted depression | Case-control GP sample | MDE = 30, rMDD = 99, HC = 101 [33.1 ± 10.5; 71M:159F] | FERT | DSM-IV | Significant difference between MDE, rMDD, and HC groups on facial affect recognition accuracy (F2,225 = 5.340, P = 0.005) |
| Cao et al. (21) | To investigate social cognitive performance in esophageal cancer patients with depression | Case-control | pMDD = 32, npMDD = 33, HC = 62 n = 127 [33.1 ± 10.5; 71M:159F] | RMET-R, FPT | BDI-II | Compared to HC, both MDD groups were impaired on affective ToM (t = 7.39, P < 0.01) and faux pas task (t = 13.75, P < 0.01) |
| Esophageal cancer patient sample | ||||||
| Csukly et al. (24) | To determine if depressed patients perceive emotion differently to controls and if this is due to emotional intensity and arousal | Case-control Clinical sample | MDD = 23, HC = 23 [48.4 ± 12.5; 18M:28F] | VHI | DSM-IV, ICD-10 | MDD impaired at recognizing facial expressions compared to HC (F46 = 6.76, P = 0.02), particularly at low intensity or arousal |
| Csukly et al. (25) | To identify associations between depressive severity, maladaptive schemas, and facial affect recognition | Case-control Inpatient sample | MDD = 107, HC = 23 [41.1 ± 11.3; 16M:90F] | VHI | DSM-IV | MDD impaired at recognizing facial expressions compared to HC (t = 5.2, P < 0.0001) |
| Donges et al. (26) | To examine emotional awareness in depressed inpatients following a psychotherapy program | Prospective longitudinal case-control Inpatient sample | MDD = 22, HC = 22 [32.1 ± 8.6; 14M:30F] | LEAS | DSM-IV | MDD performed inferiorly to HC at emotional awareness of others (F1,42 = 5.5, P < 0.05) |
| Performance of the MDD group improved over the 7 weeks of treatment (F1,42 = 5.6, P < 0.05) | ||||||
| Harkness et al. (27) | To determine if maternal history of depression impacts affective ToM performance | Case-control Outpatient sample | MDD = 61, HC = 30 [45.3 ± 14.5; 0M:91F] | RMET-R | DSM-IV | MDD performed significantly worse on affective ToM task than HC (F1,91 = 6.73, P = 0.01) |
| Langenecker et al. (28) | To evaluate emotion perception deficits in depressed women Outpatient sample | Case-control | MDD = 21, HC = 20 [30.9 ± 9.2; 0M:41F] | FEPT | BDI-II, HRSD | MDD performed inferiorly to HC in facial affect recognition accuracy (F1,38 = 6.40, P = 0.02) |
| Lee et al. (29) | To examine depressed patients’ abilities to identify mental states from affective eye expressions | Case-control Outpatient sample | MDD = 67, HC = 34 [42.7 ± 14.1; 0M:82F] | RMET-R | DSM-IV | Severe MDD less accurate than HC on affective ToM task (t65 = 2.24, P = 0.03); no difference between mild/moderate MDD and HC or MDD groups |
| Leppänen et al. (30) | To determine if depression biases the recognition of emotionally neutral faces | Case-control Inpatient sample | MDD = 18, HC = 18 [44.9 ± 9.9; 14M:22F] | PFA | ICD-10 | MDD worse than HC in facial affect recognition accuracy (F1,34 = 9.1, P < 0.006), due to misidentification of neutral faces (t34 = 4.8, P < 0.001) |
| Surguladze et al. (31) | To investigate the accuracy and response bias of depressed people to affective facial expressions | Case-control Clinical sample | MDD = 27, HC = 29 [45.0 ± 11.6; 24M:32F] | FEEST | DSM-IV | MDD worse than HC in facial affect recognition accuracy (F1,42 = 26.2, P < 0.01) |
| Szily and Kéri (32) | To determine the impact of psychosis risk in depression on social cognition | Case-control Clinical sample | prMDD = 26, MDD = 42, HC = 50 [21.2 ± 7.3; 44M:73F] | RMET-R | DSM-IV | prMDD and MDD were less accurate than HC on RMET-R (F2,230 = 10.30, P < 0.001) |
| Wang et al. (8) | To determine if psychotic features in depression impact social cognitive performance | Case-control Inpatient sample | pMDD = 23, npMDD = 33, HC = 53 [26.8 ± 4.4; 47M:62F] | RMET-R, FPT | ICD-10 | On RMET-R, pMDD inferior to both npMDD (P = 0.018) and HC (P = 0.000), npMDD superior to HC (P = 0.000) |
| On FPT, HC superior to both pMDD (U = 0.000, P = 0.000) and npMDD (U = 128.500, P = 0.000), pMDD inferior to npMDD (U = 149.500, P = 0.000) | ||||||
| Wolkenstein et al. (2) | To investigate difference in social cognitive performance between depressed patients and controls | Case-control Outpatient sample | MDD = 24, HC = 20 [36.4 ± 10.8; 19M:25F] | RMET-R, MASC | DSM-IV | MDD inferior to HC in performance on MASC (F1,42 = 4.57, P < 0.05), but equal on RMET-R (F1,42 = 0.74, P < 0.40) |
| Zobel et al. (33) | To compare social cognitive performance between depressed patients and controls | Case-control Clinical sample | MDD = 30, HC = 30 [46.5 ± 12.0; 27M:33F] | BCPS | DSM-IV | MDD inferior to HC in BCPS sequence (U = 242.5, P = 0.001), FOQ (U = 294.0, P = 0.004), SOQ (U = 183.5, P = 0.001); and WE.EL sequence (U = 282.0, P = 0.012), FOQ (U = 297.0, P = 0.016), SOQ (U = 234.0, P = 0.001) |
| WE.EL | ||||||
| (B) STUDIES INDICATING NON-SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ACUTELY DEPRESSED INDIVIDUALS AND HEALTHY CONTROLS | ||||||
| Bazin et al. (7) | To evaluate a new social cognitive task in a clinical sample | Case-control Inpatient sample | MDD = 12, HC = 15 [36.6 ± 12.8; 36M:21F] | V-SIR, ToM comic | DSM-IV | MDD performed non-significantly worse on V-SIR compared to HC. No group effect for ToM comic test |
| Bediou et al. (34) | To compare how depressed and schizophrenic patients recognize facial affect | Case-control Clinical sample | MDD = 20, HC = 20 [32.9 ± 9.8; 42M:27F] | Self-created | DSM-IV | MDD and HC performed equally well on facial affect recognition |
| Bertoux et al. (20) | To evaluate a new social cognitive task to distinguish depression from frontotemporal dementia | Case-control Inpatient sample | MDD = 19, HC = 30 [65.1 ± 9.0; 47M:39F] | Mini-SEA (PFA, sFPT) | DSM-IV | On total mini-SEA and component scores, MDD performed equally to HC |
| Gollan et al. (35) | To identify differences in affective information processing between depressed patients and controls | Case-control Clinical sample | MDD = 37, HC = 29 [35.1 ± 9.3; 34M:32F] | PFA | DSM-IV | MDD and HC performed equally in facial affect recognition and intensity categorization |
| Gollan et al. (36) | To investigate how depressed patients interpret facial affect of differing intensity | Case-control Clinical sample | MDD = 44, HC = 44 [29.5 ± 9.8; 33M:55F] | PFA | DSM-IV | No significant main effect for group (MDD vs. HC) on facial affect recognition accuracy |
| Joorman and Gotlib (37) | To examine depression-specific biases in identification of affective facial expressions | Case-control Outpatient sample | MDD = 23, SP = 27, HC = 26 [31.9 ± 9.4; 21M:51F] | FEEST | DSM-IV | MDD, SP, and HC performed equally on facial affect recognition |
| Matthews et al. (38) | To examine amygdala-cingulate functional coupling in depression during an emotional face matching task | Case-control Community sample | MDD = 15, HC = 16 [24.4 ± 5.3; 9M:22F] | PFA | DSM-IV | No difference between MDD and HC for accuracy or reaction time on face matching task |
| Seidel et al. (39) | To measure automatic behaviors toward affective facial expressions in depression | Case-control Inpatient sample | MDD = 24, HC = 24 [42.4; 24M:24F] | VERT-K | DSM-IV | MDD and HC performed equally well on facial affect recognition |
| Suslow et al. (40) | To examine spatial detection of facial emotion in depressed inpatients undergoing psychotherapy | Prospective longitudinal case-control Inpatient sample | MDD = 11, MDD/AD = 11, HC = 22 [32.1 ± 8.3; 14M:30F] | FITCT | DSM-IV | Both MDD groups performed equally to HC in spatial detection of facial affect, at two time points |
| Performance did not significantly improve in either group over the 7 weeks | ||||||
| Suslow et al. (41) | To assess awareness of masked facial expressions and automatic amygdala responses in depression | Case-control Inpatient sample | MDD = 30, HC = 26 [37.5 ± 12.4; 29M:27F] | PFA | DSM-IV | MDE and HC did not differ in performance when rating the valence of the masked facial expressions |
| Wilbertz et al. (22) | To explore preoperational features of ToM in depression | Case-control Clinical sample | MDD = 16, HC = 16 [43.7 ± 11.2; 16M:16F] | MASC | DSM-IV | MDD and HC performed equally on MASC multiple choice (t30 = 0.01, P = 0.924) and open answers (t30 = 0.03, P = 0.980) |
AD, anxiety disorder; BCPS, Brüne’s cartoon picture story test; BDI-II, Beck depression inventory-II; DSM-IV, diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders-IV; FEEST, facial expressions of emotion: stimuli and tests; FEPT, facial emotion and perception test; FERT, facial expression recognition task; FITCT, face-in-the-crowd task; FOQ, first order question; FPT, faux pas task; GP, general practice; HC, healthy controls; HRSD, Hamilton rating scale for depression; ICD-10, international classification of diseases, 10th revision; LEAS, levels of emotional awareness scale; MASC, movie for the assessment of social cognition; MA ± SD, participants’ mean age and standard deviation; MDD, major depressive disorder; MDE, major depressive episode; M:F, ratio of male to female participants; Mini-SEA, mini-social cognition and emotional assessment; N, number of participants; npMDD, non-psychotic major depressive disorder; PFA, Ekman and Friesen’s pictures of facial affect; pMDD, psychotic major depressive disorder; rMDD, remitted major depressive disorder; prMDD, major depressive disorder with psychosis risk; RMET-R, reading the mind in the eyes task, revised; sFPT, shortened faux pas task; SOQ, second-order question; SP, social phobia; ToM, theory of mind; WE.EL, Werden and Elikann test; VERT-K, Vienna emotion recognition tasks; VHI, virtual human interface; V-SIR, Versailles – situational intention reading.