title: Effects of depressed mood on objective and subjective measures of attention.
abstract: People with depression report frequent cognitive failures, but objective measures of cognition show mixed results. Some studies show impairment on effortful tasks. The relationship between subjective and objective cognitive failures was studied in 102 "depressed" or "nondepressed" UK servicemen, grouped by Beck Depression Inventory scores with a cutoff score of 10. Participants were administered cognitive tests including the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART), a laboratory measure of vigilance that has revealed increased attentional lapses in traumatic brain injury patients. The depressed men made more errors on SART than the nondepressed men (P=0.012) but reported much higher incidences of cognitive failures on a standardized questionnaire (P=0.0001). The depressed men's SART reaction times slowed following an error, a pattern different from that of brain-injured subjects. Nonclinical depressed subjects may respond "catastrophically" to errors, heightening the subjective sense of failure and contributing to the strong relationship between subjectively reported cognitive failures and depression.
authors.affiliation: Gulf War Illnesses Research Unit, Guy's, King's, and St. Thomas' School of Medicine, London, UK.
authors.forename: Lydia
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Farrin
authors.forename: Lisa
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Hull
authors.forename: Catherine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Unwin
authors.forename: Til
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Wykes
authors.forename: Anthony
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: David
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D003863:Depression / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008889:Military Personnel / Q000523:psychology*; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D010555:Personality Inventory / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011594:Psychometrics; D011930:Reaction Time; D012016:Reference Values; D012649:Self Concept; D006113:United Kingdom