Selective affective biasing in recognition memory in the irritable bowel syndrome.
The cognitive model of depression assigns a central role to negatively biased information processing in the pathogenesis of the emotional disorder. The relationship between depression and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) was explored from a cognitive perspective. A word recognition memory task was constructed: subjects had to memorize and subsequently recognise a set of emotionally loaded stimulus words with either positive, neutral, or negative connotations. Four age matched groups participated--30 IBS patients, 28 depressed patients, 28 patients with organic gastrointestinal disease, and 30 healthy volunteers. The depressed patients, as would be expected, showed a significant bias in favour of emotionally negative words (p < 0.05): the IBS patients showed the same negative bias. In addition the IBS patients made significantly more false-positive type errors in recognising emotionally negative words than either the depressed patients (p < 0.05) or the healthy volunteers (p < 0.01). This suggests that the IBS patients have a peculiar confirmatory bias for negative material. This may have clinical relevance in terms of the IBS patients' evaluation of their own abdominal sensory experience.
Gomborone
J E
JE
Department of Gastroenterology, St Bartholomew's Hospital, London.
Dewsnap
P A
PA
Libby
G W
GW
Farthing
M J
MJ
D000328:Adult; D003109:Colonic Diseases, Functional / Q000523:psychology*; D003863:Depression / Q000150:complications / Q000523:psychology*; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D011581:Psychological Tests