Depression: a breakdown of perceptual defence?
The effect of depressed mood on the tachistoscopic recognition of neutral/unpleasant words was investigated in a group of 18 depressed inpatients and in 17 normal controls. A 50% recognition threshold for 30 neutral words was calculated for each subject, in order to exclude the effects of depressive slowness on the experimental task. Each subject was tachistoscopically presented with a series of experimental words (30 neutral/30 unpleasant) at his 50% level, and the ratio of neutral to unpleasant words recognised calculated. Depressed subjects tended to recognise a higher ratio of unpleasant to neutral words.
D000328:Adult; D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D010467:Perceptual Defense