Self-judgment Dissected: A Computational Modeling Analysis of Self-Referential Processing and its Relationship to Trait Mindfulness Facets and Depression Symptoms

A computational model of decision-making shows that the tendency to judge oneself positively rather than negatively is linked to greater mindful awareness and lower depression, both before and after an 8-week mindfulness intervention with 96 participants. At the start, many different depression symptoms were associated with less positive self-judgment. Over the course of the intervention, changes in only a few anhedonia-related symptoms were substantially connected to this shift in self-judgment. The findings support cognitive theories that emphasize self-judgment in depression and mindfulness theories suggesting mindful awareness fosters more positive self-views.

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Abstract

Cognitive theories of depression, and mindfulness theories of well-being, converge on the notion that self-judgment plays a critical role in mental health. However, these theories have rarely been tested via tasks and computational modeling analyses that can disentangle the information processes operative in self-judgments. We applied a drift-diffusion computational model to the self-referential encoding task (SRET) collected before and after an 8-week mindfulness intervention ( n = 96). A drift-rate regression parameter representing positive—relative to negative—self-referential judgment strength positively related to mindful awareness and inversely related to depression, both at baseline and over time; however, this parameter did not significantly relate to the interaction between mindful awareness and nonjudgmentalness. At the level of individual depression symptoms, at baseline, a spectrum of symptoms (inversely) correlated with the drift-rate regression parameter, suggesting that many distinct depression symptoms relate to valenced self-judgment between subjects. By contrast, over the intervention, changes in only a smaller subset of anhedonia-related depression symptoms showed substantial relationships with this parameter. Both behavioral and model-derived measures showed modest split-half and test-retest correlations. Results support cognitive theories that implicate self-judgment in depression and mindfulness theories, which imply that mindful awareness should lead to more positive self-views.