Developmental origins of cognitive vulnerabilities to depression: review of processes contributing to stability and change across time

Depression is a substantial public health burden that shows dramatic increases from childhood into adolescence and adulthood. Rates of depression skyrocket from early to late adolescence (Hankin & Abela, 2005). Numerous etiological factors and processes have been proposed and studied to explain why individuals become depressed (Abela & Hankin, 2008a). Cognitive theories of depression are prominent etiological models that have been extensively studied in adults and are increasingly being applied to account for the development of depression across the lifespan (Hankin & Abela). Briefly, according to cognitive theories of depression, depressed and depression-vulnerable individuals are hypothesized to exhibit attention, interpretation, inferential, and memory biases for salient stimuli. The most prominent cognitive theories include Beck’s cognitive theory (BT; Beck, 1987), hopelessness theory (HT; Abramson, Metalsky, & Alloy, 1989), and response styles theory (RST; Nolen-Hoeksema, 1991). Each theory highlights different cognitive vulnerabilities and processes hypothesized to contribute to depression. BT focuses on negative schema and dysfunctional attitudes, which are rigid and extreme cognitive structures that negatively filter and bias social and affective information. HT emphasizes a negative cognitive style, which comprises negative inferences about the cause of events (i.e., negative attributional style), self-implications, and consequences that individuals make in response to events. RST proposes rumination as a process of repeatedly focusing on symptoms of depression and the meaning, causes, and consequences of the symptoms. Considerable evidence supports cognitive vulnerabilities from these main theories as prospective predictors of depression among adults, adolescents, and children. Both dysfunctional attitudes from BT and a negative cognitive style from HT moderate the longitudinal association between stressors and depression, consistent with the cognitive vulnerability-stress hypothesis of these theories, and baseline rumination has been shown to predict prospective elevations of depression (see Abela & Hankin, 2008b; Hankin & Abela, 2005; Lakdawalla, Hankin, & Mermelstein, for reviews). Despite considerable evidence supporting cognitive vulnerabilities and processes predicting depression, it is important to note that numerous factors and mechanisms contribute to the ontogeny of depression as it is a multifactorial disorder. As such, cognitive vulnerabilities are a contributory, but not a necessary, cause of depression, and so youth may become depressed without exhibiting cognitive vulnerability. Given the successful predictive power of these central cognitive vulnerabilities in accounting for prospective increases in depression across the lifespan, investigators have increasingly turned attention to the potential developmental origins of these cognitive factors to understand when they emerge, consolidate, and stabilize into relatively enduring, trait-like risks to depression. The primary focus of this article is to review evidence for some of the processes and factors that have been postulated to contribute to the emergence and stabilization of cognitive vulnerabilities. In particular, we focus on genetic factors, temperament, parenting and peers as salient interpersonal influences, and stressful events and contexts (see Abela & Hankin, 2008b; Alloy, Abramson, Smith, Gibb, & Neeren, 2006; Ingram, 2001 for reviews).