Exceptional Canadian Contributions to Research on Cognitive Vulnerability to Depression

For more than four decades, Canadian psychologists have made significant contributions to the understanding of cognitive vulnerability to depression. This article highlights some of these exceptional contributions and the important roles Canadian scientists have played in enhancing our understanding of the cognitive products (e.g., dysfunctional attitudes), cognitive operations/processes (e.g., attention, encoding, and memory biases), and cognitive structures (i.e., cognitive organization) involved in depression. Following this review, we discuss research that has integrated cognitive vulnerability with other risk factors for depression, address some important measurement issues in cognitive vulnerability research, and highlight directions for future research. Depuis plus de quatre décennies, les psychologues du Canada font d'importantes contributions à l'amélioration de la compréhension de la vulnérabilité cognitive à l'égard de la dépression. Cet article met en relief certaines de leurs exceptionnelles contributions ainsi que le rôle important qu'ont joué les scientifiques canadiens en vue d'approfondir notre compréhension des produits cognitifs (par ex., les attitudes dysfonctionnelles), des activités et des opérations cognitives (par ex., l'attention, l'encodage, les biais de mémoire), et des structures cognitives (c.-à-d. l'organisation cognitive) qu'implique la dépression. Après cette revue, les auteurs présentent les recherches qui ont incorporé la vulnérabilité cognitive et d'autres facteurs de risque de la dépression, discutent de certaines des importantes questions relatives aux mesures dans le domaine de la recherche sur la vulnérabilité cognitive et suggèrent des orientations pour d'éventuelles recherches. Public Significance Statement This article reviews some of the exceptional contributions that Canadian psychologists have made to understanding cognitive vulnerability to depression over the past four decades. We review research ranging from more surface-level negative thinking, to information processing biases (e.g., selective attention to, or enhanced recall of, negative content), to understanding deeper beliefs (e.g., the organization of information and core beliefs about self). We also provide several important suggestions for the next generation of cognitive vulnerability research, including developing more integrative models, refining the measurement of various constructs, testing causal mechanisms, and validating culturally sensitive m