The emergence of gender differences in depression during adolescence.

There are no gender differences in depression rates in prepubescent children, but, after the age of 15, girls and women are about twice as likely to be depressed as boys and men. In this article, three models for how gender differences in depression might develop in early adolescence are described and evaluated. According to Model 1, the causes of depression are the same for girls and boys, but these causes become more prevalent in girls than in boys in early adolescence. According to Model 2, there are different causes of depression in girls and boys, and the causes of girls' depression become more prevalent than the causes of boys' depression in early adolescence. According to Model 3, girls are more likely than boys to carry risk factors for depression even before early adolescence, but these risk factors lead to depression only in the face of challenges that increase in prevalence in early adolescence. Most studies of gender differences in depression have focused on the effects of individual variables on depression in girls and boys rather than on testing models of how these differences develop. Evidence for the variables most commonly thought to contribute to gender differences in depression in children and adolescents is reviewed, and this evidence is related to the three models for how these differences develop. It is concluded that Model 3 is best supported by the available data, although much more research is needed. Before adolescence, girls appear to develop more risk factors for depression than boys; girls also apparently face more new challenges in early adolescence than boys. It is argued that these factors combine, as specified in Model 3, to generate gender differences in depression beginning in early adolescence.

Predictors and consequences of childhood depressive symptoms: a 5-year longitudinal study.

A 5-year longitudinal study investigated the interrelationships among children's experiences of depressive symptoms, negative life events, explanatory style, and helplessness behaviors in social and achievement situations. The results revealed that early in childhood, negative events, but not explanatory style, predicted depressive symptoms; later in childhood, a pessimistic explanatory style emerged as a significant predictor of depressive symptoms, alone and in conjunction with negative events. When children suffered periods of depression, their explanatory styles not only deteriorated but remained pessimistic even after their depression subsided, presumably putting them at risk for future episodes of depression. Some children seem repeatedly prone to depressive symptoms over periods of at least 2 years. Depressed children consistently showed helpless behaviors in social and achievement settings.

Sex differences in depression and explanatory style in children.

We report data from the first two years of a longitudinal study of depression, and explanatory style in children. Measures of these variables have been obtained from a group of elementary school children every six months since they were in the third grade. Results show that the boys consistently reported more depressive symptoms than the girls. This was particularly true for symptoms of anhedonia and behavioral disturbance. The boys also showed much more maladaptive explanatory styles than the girls. These results are discussed in light of previous studies of sex differences in children's attributions. Possible reasons for the expected switch in the sex differences in puberty are also discussed.

Learned helplessness in children: a longitudinal study of depression, achievement, and explanatory style.

In this longitudinal study, the depressive symptoms, life events, and explanatory styles of 168 school children were measured five times during the course of 1 year. Measures of school achievement were obtained once during the year. Depressive symptoms and explanatory styles were found to be quite stable over the year. As predicted by the reformulated learned helplessness theory, explanatory style both correlated with concurrent levels of depression and school achievement and predicted later changes in depression during the year. Depression also predicted later explanatory styles. The implications of these results for intervention with children with depressive symptoms or school achievement problems are discussed.

Developmental changes in selective and integrative visual attention.

School-aged children and adults performed two speeded classification tasks designed to examine the relation between selective and integrative aspects of visual attention. Stimuli consisted of two parentheses (Experiment 1) or two arrows (Experiment 2) separated by 0.5 to 16 degrees visual angle. In a selective attention task, observers classified stimuli on the basis of one of the two elements. Younger children experienced more interference when the elements were closely spaced than older children and adults. In an integrative attention task, stimuli were classified on the basis of both of the elements. Here age differences were most pronounced when elements were separated by large visual angles. These findings suggest that the ability to contract and expand the size of the attentional "spotlight" improves with age in the school years.

Visual-geometric illusions: unisex phenomena.

The possibility of sex differences in responses to visual-geometric illusions was investigated with the use of forty-five illusion variants and a sample of 221 observers. No difference in illusion magnitude as a function of sex was found. A second experiment measured illusion decrement and transfer of decrement to other illusion configurations. Again there were no significant differences between male and female observers.

The case for misapplied constancy scaling: depth associations elicited by illusion configurations.

It has been suggested that many visual-geometric illusions arise from inappropriate evocation of size-constancy by depth cues implicit in illusion configurations. Observers gave free association responses while viewing illusion figures. Analysis of these responses provides weak but consistent evidence for the elicitation of depth in the Sander parallelogram, Mueller-Lyer, Zoellner, and Ehrenfels variant of the Ponzo illusion. No evidence for depth is found in the normal form of the Ponzo, Poggendorff, and horizontal-vertical illusions, and the evidence is ambiguous in the Orbison configurations. These results indicate that depth processing may be evoked by some, but not all, classical illusion forms.