Life is … great! Emotional attention during instructed and uninstructed ambiguity resolution in relation to depressive symptoms.

•Relations among depressive symptom severity, attention and interpretation biases were examined under tendency and ability processing conditions.•Attention biases were measured online via eye tracking in tendency and ability versions of an interpretation task.•Depression-linked attention biases emerged under both processing tendency and ability conditions.•Attention biases acted as an intervening variable in the relation between depressive symptom severity and interpretation biases under ability conditions.•Ability-related attention biases may regulate how individuals elaborate on new emotional information.