| Abstract: | Evidence for the depressed S's hypersensitivity to any feedback about his performance and for the reversibility of depression-based perceptual deficits suggests that the depressed S can perceive response–reinforcement contingencies correctly, but only if given unassailable evidence of the efficacy of his actions. A high rate of response-contingent reinforcement is one instance of such evidence. The authors predicted that depressed Ss would misperceive skill task rewards under low- but not under high-reinforcement conditions. Changes in verbalized expectancies of success on skill and chance tasks at either 50 or 75% reinforcement rate were compared for 20 depressed and 20 nondepressed college students. Contrary to prediction, depressed Ss in no way differed from the nondepressed on the skill task at 50% reinforcement, and they produced larger expectancy changes on the chance task than did nondepressed Ss at 75% reinforcement. Results argue against the view that the depressed person misperceives response reinforcement contingencies, and they suggest instead that the depressed person overgeneralizes from any experience of success or failure in forming expectations for future successes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
