Diminished response to pleasant stimuli by depressed women.
This study examined the self-report and facial expressions of emotional response to pictorial stimuli and the incidental learning of pleasant and unpleasant words by depressed (n = 20) and nondepressed (n = 20) women. Depression was associated with reports of diminished emotional response and reduced frequency and intensity of facial expressions only to pleasant stimuli. The 2 groups did not differ in response to hedonically unpleasant stimuli, even those specifically relevant to the emotion of sadness. In a similar vein, depressed and nondepressed participants showed differences in incidental recall for only pleasant self-referential terms. There was no difference in recall of unpleasant words. These findings suggest the importance of hedonic deficits on psychological processes in clinical depression.
Sloan
D M
DM
Department of Psychology, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122, USA. Dsloan@temple.edu
Strauss
M E
ME
Wisner
K L
KL
D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D003863:Depression / Q000523:psychology*; D003865:Major Depressive Disorder / Q000523:psychology; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning; D011939:Mental Recall; D008875:Middle Aged; D009042:Motivation; D011578:Psycholinguistics