Visuospatial and affect recognition deficit in depression.
BACKGROUND
Theorists differ in their opinion whether interpersonal difficulties in depression is associated more with perceptual impairment or with emotional bias. The present study intended to resolve such differences of opinion.


METHODS
Major depressives, general medical patients, and non-patient controls were administered three visuospatial and two affective tasks to examine the nature of performance deficit associated with each group.


RESULTS
Major depressives were found significantly impaired in both visuospatial and affective tasks in comparison to general medical patients, who in turn, were impaired than non-patient controls.


CONCLUSIONS
Major depressives' perceptual deficit is pervasive and not specific to affective categories.


CONCLUSIONS
The study could have been more informative if more psychiatric groups had been included as subjects.


CONCLUSIONS
Improvement in depressives' ability for visuospatial and affective tasks may be considered as a marker of their clinical improvement.
Asthana
H S
HS
Department of Psychology, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India.
Mandal
M K
MK
Khurana
H
H
Haque-Nizamie
S
S
D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D005149:Facial Expression; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D010468:Perceptual Disorders / Q000209:etiology*; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*