Appraisal of the self-schema construct in cognitive models of depression.

Discusses the role of self-schemata in cognitive models of depression and evaluates the empirical support for this notion according to criteria consonant with this construct's usage in cognitive psychology and social cognition. Whereas the concept of a negative self-schema was initially proposed as a distal cognitive diathesis to depressive disorder, measurement problems have hindered a meaningful test of this construct's predictive capacity. Furthermore, conceptual and design-related confounds in extant depressive-schema studies prevent the demonstration of schematic processing independent of the effects of depressed mood on the dependent variables used. It is argued that reconceptualizing self-schema in cognitive-structural terms may help address and resolve some of these current problems. For example, methods used to assess more general knowledge structures, such as semantic networks, might be profitably used to verify whether information about the self is similarly organized. This can then begin the process of specifying the exact nature of the information thought to be stored within this structure and allow researchers to move beyond a simple dichotomy of positive and negative elements to models that better reflect the complexity of self-construal. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)