Mood Induction in Children: Methodological Issues and Clinical Implications

The author reviews 7 different types of mood induction procedures for use with children and discusses these procedures in light of a number of critical methodological issues. The issues considered are administration, participant characteristics, measurement, mood quality, and demand characteristics. The author proposes a broad framework for the future investigation of mood induction procedures for children that includes comparative outcome studies, parametric studies, and more comprehensive mood measurement. Several issues are outlined that investigators might consider when designing experiments to test the generality of negative mood induction studies to clinical depression, including specificity or comorbidity, intensity or severity, age, and sex.