Editorial: Missing the Pull of Life's Rewards? Attention Shifting and the Development of Depression

Abstract

A burgeoning literature is elucidating the nature of reward disruption in the development of depression. At this point, the question is not whether reward function is disrupted, but how.¹ Early conceptual models of the disorder emphasized that depression involves disturbances to positive affect-not just negative affect-but clinical affective science took some time to catch up. Currently, investigations of reward processing, a component and mechanism of positive affect, are prominent in depression research. Developmental research on this topic has proceeded from early studies establishing that reward function is altered in adolescent depression to investigations attempting to disentangle the ways in which reward processing is disrupted before, during, and after the onset of depression. Attentional flexibility in the context of reward and punishment provides an intriguing potential context for altered reward processing in vulnerable youth.