Journal article
Clinical psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, 2025
Postdoctoral Researcher
APA
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Meyerhöfer, S., Ottenstein, C., Kirchner, L., Müller-Pinzler, L., Krach, S., & Kube, T. (2025). Intraindividual trajectories of belief updating in relation to depressive symptoms: reduced integration of positive performance feedback. Clinical Psychological Science : a Journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
Chicago/Turabian
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Meyerhöfer, Sebastian, Charlotte Ottenstein, L. Kirchner, Laura Müller-Pinzler, Sören Krach, and Tobias Kube. “Intraindividual Trajectories of Belief Updating in Relation to Depressive Symptoms: Reduced Integration of Positive Performance Feedback.” Clinical psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science (2025).
MLA
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Meyerhöfer, Sebastian, et al. “Intraindividual Trajectories of Belief Updating in Relation to Depressive Symptoms: Reduced Integration of Positive Performance Feedback.” Clinical Psychological Science : a Journal of the Association for Psychological Science, 2025.
BibTeX Click to copy
@article{sebastian2025a,
title = {Intraindividual trajectories of belief updating in relation to depressive symptoms: reduced integration of positive performance feedback},
year = {2025},
journal = {Clinical psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science},
author = {Meyerhöfer, Sebastian and Ottenstein, Charlotte and Kirchner, L. and Müller-Pinzler, Laura and Krach, Sören and Kube, Tobias}
}
Previous research suggests that depression is related to difficulties with revising established negative expectations. However, it is not yet clear how precisely these difficulties transpire. We addressed this question by adapting a well-established experimental paradigm into a trial-by-trial learning task in a nonclinical sample ( N = 391; 50.6% with elevated depressive symptoms). Negative versus positive performance expectations were initially established before they were confirmed versus disconfirmed. Multilevel analysis revealed that participants formed and subsequently revised performance expectations along decelerating trajectories. Increased levels of depressive symptoms were significantly associated with a reduced revision of initially established negative expectations when the feedback’s valence turned positive such that participants’ expectations were disconfirmed. Conversely, depressive symptoms were not significantly related to an increased revision of positive expectations in response to disconfirming negative feedback. Our results align with the view that lower responsiveness to positive expectation-disconfirming information is a critical feature of depressive symptoms.