Depressed individuals exhibit increased sensitivity to mistakes and negative feedback (Elliott, Sahakian, Michael, Paykel, & Dolan, 1998; Steffens, Wagner, Levy, Horn, & Krishnan, 2001). Individuals endorsing depressive symptoms were shown to have decreased accuracy after incorrect compared to correct trials, which is evidence of poor performance adjustments following errors (Holmes & Pizzagalli, 2007; Pizzagalli, Peccoralo, Davidson, & Cohen, 2006). A negatively biased view of the environment is also thought to be a strong factor in the development of depression (Beck, 1967; Leppanen, 2006). Depressed individuals accurately judged the number of error responses they made, but underestimated the number of correct responses in a working memory task (Dunn, Dalgleish, Lawrence, & Ogilvie, 2007).
