Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-13T01:03:47.913Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Impaired attention in depressive states: a non-specific deficit?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2009

J-P. Mialet ,
H. G. Pope  and
D. Yurgelun-Todd
J-P. Mialet*
Affiliation:
61, Boulevard des Invalides, Paris, France; the Biological Psychiatry Laboratory, McLean Hospital, Belmont and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
H. G. Pope
Affiliation:
61, Boulevard des Invalides, Paris, France; the Biological Psychiatry Laboratory, McLean Hospital, Belmont and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
D. Yurgelun-Todd
Affiliation:
61, Boulevard des Invalides, Paris, France; the Biological Psychiatry Laboratory, McLean Hospital, Belmont and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
*
1Address for correspondence: Dr Jean-Paul Mialet 61 Boulevard des Invalides75007 ParisFrance.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Synopsis

Although cognitive research on attention has advanced significantly in recent years, these advances have produced few specific hypotheses regarding the attentional impairment seen in depression, and few experiments designed to test them. We review the limited neuropsychological literature on impaired attention in depressive states, with emphasis on areas where the findings of modern cognitive research might be applied in the future to design more sophisticated tests of attentional impairment. At present, it is not possible to determine whether the attentional deficits seen in depression are specific to this disorder, or whether they represent a final common pathway of impaired cognition seen in many different mental and organic deficit states, such as schizophrenia and dementias.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Psychological Medicine , Volume 26 , Issue 5 , September 1996 , pp. 1009 - 1020
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

American Psychiatric Association (1994). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edn. (DSM-IV). American Psychiatric Association: Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Austin, M. P., Ross, M., Murray, S., O'Carroll, R. E., Ebmeier, K. P. & Goodwin, G. M. (1992). Cognitive function in major depression. Journal of Affective Disorders 25, 21–30.Google Scholar
Baddeley, A. D. & Hitch, G. J. (1974). Working memory. In Advances in Learning and Motivation, vol. 8 (ed. Bower, G.), pp. 47–90. Academic Press: New York.Google Scholar
Beck, A. T. (1967). Depression: Clinical, Experimental and Theoretical Aspects. Harper and Row: New York.Google Scholar
Bower, G. H. (1981). Mood and memory, American Psychologist 36, 129–148.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Boyer, P. (1988). Symptômatologie négative et schizophrénic: de l'hétérogenêïté du diagnostic à une optique trans-nosographique. Annales de Psychiatrie 4, 425–429.Google Scholar
Buchsbaum, M. S., Lee, S., Haier, R., Wu, J. C., Green, M. & Tang, S. W. (1988). Effects of amoxapine and imipramine on evoked potentials in the continuous performance test in patients with affective disorders. Neuropsychologia 20, 15–22.Google Scholar
Buchsbaum, M. S., DeLisi, L. E., Holcomb, H. H., Cappelletti, J., King, A., Johnson, J., Hazlett, E., Dowling-Zimmerman, S., Post, R., Morihiza, J., Carpenter, W., Cohen, R., Pickar, D., Weinberger, D., Margolin, R. & Kessler, R. (1984). Anteroposterior gradients in cerebral glucose in schizophrenia and affective disorders. Archives of General Psychiatry 41, 1159–1166.Google Scholar
Burt, D. B., Zembar, M. J. & Niederehe, G. (1995). Depression and memory impairment: a meta-analysis of the association, its pattern, and specificity. Psychological Bulletin 117, 285–305.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Byrne, D. G. (1976). Choice reaction times in depressive states. British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 15, 149–156.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Byrne, D. G. (1977). Affect and vigilance performance in depressive illness. Journal of Psychiatric Research 13, 185–191.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Channon, S., Baker, J. E. & Robertson, M. M. (1993). Working memory in clinical depression: an experimental study. Psychological Medicine 23, 87–91.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chelazzi, L., Miller, E. K., Duncan, J. & Desimone, R. (1993). A neural basis for visual search in inferior temporal cortex. Nature 363, 345–347.Google Scholar
Cohen, R. M., Weingartner, H., Smallberg, S. A., Pickar, D. & Murphy, D. L. (1982). Efforts and cognition in depression. Archives of General Psychiatry 36, 563–567.Google Scholar
Cohen, R. M., Semple, W. E., Gross, M., Nordahl, T., King, A. C., Rickar, D. & Post, R. (1989). Evidence for common alterations in cerebral glucose metabolism in major affective disorders and schizophrenia. Neuropsychopharmacology 2, 241–254.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cornblatt, B. A., Lenzenweger, M. F. & Erlennmeyer-Kimmling, K. L. (1989). The continuous performance test, identical pair versions: II. Contrasting attentional profile in schizophrenic and depressed patients. Psychiatry Research 29, 65–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cornell, D. G., Suarez, R. & Berent, S. (1984). Psychomotor retardation in melancholic and non-melancholic depression: cognitive and motor components. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 93, 150–157.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Corwin, J., Peselow, E., Feenan, K. & Rotrosen, J. (1990). Memory deficits in depression: a test of task difficulty, store and tasks type explanations. Quoted by Robbins et al. (1992).Google Scholar
Cowan, N. (1988). Evolving conceptions of memory storage, selective attention and their mutual constraints within the human information-processing system. Psychological Bulletin 104, 163–191.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Donnelly, E. F., Dent, J. K. & Murphy, D. L. (1972). Comparison of temporal lobe epileptics and affective disorders on the Halstead–Reitan test battery. Journal of Clinical Psychology 28, 61–62.3.0.CO;2-R>CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dunbar, G. C. & Lischman, W. A. (1984). Depression, recognition-memory and hedonic tone: a signal detection analysis. British Journal of Psychiatry 144, 376–382.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
El Massioui, F. (1988). Étude électrophysiologique des processus attentionnels dans la dépression. Psychologie Française 33, 259–266.Google Scholar
Ellgring, H. (1989). Non-verbal Communication in Depression (European Monographs in Social Psychology), pp. 84–119. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, and Edition de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme: Paris.Google Scholar
Ellis, H. C. & Ashbrook, P. W. (1988). Resource allocation model of the effects of depressed mood state on memory. In Affect, Cognition and Social Behavior, (ed. Fielder, K. and Forgas, J.), pp. 25–43. Hogrefe: Gottingen.Google Scholar
Eysenck, M. W. (1990). Anxiety and cognitive functioning. In Handbook of Anxiety, Vol. 1: The Neurobiology of Anxiety (ed. Burrows, G. D., Roth, M. and Noves, R. Jr), pp. 419–435. Elsevier Science Publishers: Amsterdam.Google Scholar
Frith, C. D. (1987). The positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia reflect impairments in the perception and initiation of action. Psychological Medicine 17, 631–648.Google Scholar
Friedman, A. S. (1964). Minimal effects of severe depression on cognitive functioning. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 69, 237–243.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ghozlan, A. & Widlöcher, D. (1988). Ralentissement psychomoteur dépressif et traitement de l'information. Psychologie Française 33, 251–258.Google Scholar
Gjerde, P. F. (1983). Attentional capacity dysfunction and arousal in schizophrenia. Psychological Bulletin 93, 57–72.Google Scholar
Golinkoff, M. & Sweeney, J. A. (1989). Cognitive impairments in depression. Journal of Affective Disorders 17, 105–112.Google Scholar
Gotlib, I. H. & Cane, D. B. (1987). Construct accessibility and clinical depression: a longitudinal investigation. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 96, 199–204.Google Scholar
Gotlib, I. H. & McCann, C. D. (1984). Construct accessibility and depression: an examination of cognitive and affective factors. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 47, 427–439.Google Scholar
Gotlib, I. H., McLachlan, A. L. & Katz, A. N. (1988). Biases in visual attention in depressed and non-depressed individuals. Cognition and Emotion 2, 185–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Griffin, J. A., Dember, W. N. & Warm, J. S. (1986). Effects of depression on expectancy in sustained attention. Motivation and Emotion 10, 195–205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamilton, M. (1967). Development of a rating scale for primary depressive illness. British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 6, 278–295.Google Scholar
Hart, R. P. & Kwentus, J. A. (1987). Psychomotor slowing and subcortical-type dysfunction in depression. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry 50, 1263–1266.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hasher, L. & Zacks, R. T. (1979). Automatic and effortful processes in memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 108, 356–388.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herskovic, J. E., Kietzman, M. L. & Sutton, S. (1986). Visual flicker in depression: response criteria, confidence ratings and response times. Psychological Medicine 16, 187–197.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hertel, P. T. & Hardin, T. S. (1990). Remembering with and without awareness in a depressed mood: evidence of deficits in initiative. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 119, 45–59.Google Scholar
Hertel, P. T. & Rude, S. S. (1991). Depressive deficits in memory: focusing attention improves subsequent recall. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 120, 301–309.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hill, A. B. & Dutton, F. (1989). Depression and selective attention to self-esteem-threatening words. Personality and Individual Differences 10, 915–917.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ingram, R. E. (1990). Self-focused attention in clinical disorders: review and a conceptual model. Psychological Bulletin 105, 156–176.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
King, H. E. (1975). Psychomotor correlates of behavior disorder. In Experimental Approaches to Psychopathology (ed. Kietzman, M. L., Sutton, S. and Zubin, J.), pp. 421–450. Academic Press: New York.Google Scholar
Krames, L. & McDonald, M. R. (1985). Distraction and depressive cognitions. Cognitive Therapy and Research 9, 561–573.Google Scholar
McAllister, T. W. (1981). Cognitive functioning in the affective disorders. Comprehensive Psychiatry 22, 572–586.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McLeod, C., Mathews, A. & Tata, P. (1986). Attentional bias in emotional disorders. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 95, 15–20.Google Scholar
Malone, J. R. L. & Hemsley, D. R. (1977). Lowered responsiveness and auditory signal detectability during depression. Psychological Medicine 7, 717–722.Google Scholar
Martinot, J. L. (1990). Dépression et nouvelles techniques d'imagerie cérébrale. In La Dépression, Études. (ed. Feline, A., Hardy, P. and de Bonis, M.), pp. 235–252. Masson: Paris.Google Scholar
Mialet, J. P. (1981). Les troubles de l'attention dans la schizophrénie. In Actualités de la Schizophrénie (ed. Pichot, P.), pp. 195–223. Presses Universitaires de France: Paris.Google Scholar
Mialet, J. P. (1989). Effets de l'anxiété sur l'attention. Données des recherches cognitives. Psychologie médicale, Numero spécial 21, 109–125.Google Scholar
Mialet, J. P. (1991). Les théories cognitives de l'attention: de la sélection de l'information à la construction de la conscience. In Psychopathologie cognitive (ed. Boyer, P., Loas, G. and Samuel-Lajeunesse, B.), pp. 69–81. Masson: Paris.Google Scholar
Mialet, J. P. & Pichot, P. (1980). Le pistage visuel. Son intérêt pour l'analyse des troubles de l'attention chez les schizophrènes. Annales Médico-Psychologiques 3, 325–335.Google Scholar
Miller, E. & Lewis, P. (1977). Recognition memory in elderly patients with depression and dementia: a signal detection analysis. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 86, 84–86.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Miller, W. R. (1975). Psychological deficit in depression. Psychological Bulletin 82, 238–260.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mirsky, A. F., Primac, D. W., Aimone-Marsan, C., Rosvold, H. E. & Stevens, J. R. (1960). A comparison of the psychological test performance of patients with focal and nonfocal epilepsy. Experimental Neurology 2, 75–89.Google Scholar
Mirsky, A. F., Anthony, B. J., Duncan, C. C., Ahearn, M. B. & Kellam, S. G. (1991). Analysis of the elements of attention: a neuropsychological approach. Neuropsychological Review 2, 109–143.Google Scholar
Mogg, K., Weinman, J. & Mathews, A. (1987). Memory bias in clinical anxiety. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 96, 94–98.Google Scholar
Mogg, K., Bradley, P. B., Williams, R. & Matthews, A. (1993). Subliminal processing of emotional information in anxiety and depression. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 102, 304–311.Google Scholar
Mueller, J. H., Kausler, D. H., Faherty, A. & Oliver, M. (1980). Reaction time as a function of age, anxiety and typicality. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society 76, 473–476.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nakamura, M., Iida, H., Fukui, Y. & Takahashi, S. (1982). Melancholia and excessive CNV recovery after non-response condition. Folia Psychiatrica Neurologica Japonica 36, 81–88.Google Scholar
Norman, D. A. & Bobrow, D. G. (1975). On data-limited and resource-limited processes. Cognitive Psychology 7, 44–64.Google Scholar
Norman, D. A. & Shallice, T. (1986). Attention and action: willed and automatic control of behavior. In Consciousness and Self-Regulation. Advances in Research and Theory (ed. Davidson, R. J., Schwartz, G. E. and Shapiro, D.), pp. 1–18. Plenum Press: New York.Google Scholar
O'Brien, J. T., Sahakian, B. J. & Checkley, S. A. (1993). Cognitive impairments in patients with seasonal affective disorder. British Journal of Psychiatry 163, 338–343.Google Scholar
Pasuraman, R. & Davies, D. R. (1984). Varieties of Attention, pp. xii–xxiii. Academic Press: Orlando, FL.Google Scholar
Paty, J., Claverie, B., Nizard, A., Brun, A., Brenot, P., Leborgne, N. & Bourgeois, M. (1980). Onde Variation Contingente Negative et états dépressifs. Psychologie Médicale 12, 2485–2496.Google Scholar
Pfefferbaum, A., Wenegral, B. G. T., Ford, J. M., Roth, W. T. & Koffell, B. S. (1984). Clinical application component of event related potentials in dementia, depression or schizophrenia Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology 59, 104–124.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pogue-Geile, M. F. & Oltmanns, T. F. (1980). Sentence perception and distractibility in schizophrenic, manic and depressed patients. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 89, 115–124.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Posner, M. I. (1975). Psychobiology of attention. In Handbook of Psychobiology (ed. Gazzaniga, M. and Blakemore, G.), pp. 441–480. Academic Press: New York.Google Scholar
Posner, M. I. (1978). Chronometric Explorations of the Mind. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates: Hillsdale, NJ.Google Scholar
Pull, C., Pull, M. C. & Pichot, P. (1976). Étude statistique contrôlée de l'originalité symptômatique des dépressions à début tardif, et du rôle pathoplastique de l'âge. Annales Médico-Psychologiques 1, 691–701.Google Scholar
Robbins, T. W., Joyce, E. M. & Sahakian, B. J. (1992). Neuropyschology and imagining. In Handbook of Affective Disorders (ed. Paykel, E. S.), pp. 289–309. Guilford Press: London.Google Scholar
Rogers, D., Lees, A. J., Smith, E., Trimbel, M. & Stern, G. M. (1987). Bradyphrenia in Parkinson's disease and psychomotor retardation in depressive illness. An experimental study. Brain 110, 761–776.Google Scholar
Roy-Byrne, P. P., Weingartner, H., Bierer, L. M., Thompson, K. & Post, R. M. (1986). Effortful and automatic cognitive processes in depression. Archives of General Psychiatry 43, 265–267.Google Scholar
Sacuzzo, D. P. & Braff, D. L. (1986). Information-processing abnormalities: trait- and state dependent components. Schizophrenia Bulletin 12, 447–456.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salthouse, T. A. (1985). A Theory of Cognitive Aging. North Holland: Amsterdam.Google Scholar
Schneider, W. & Shiffrin, R. M. (1987). Controlled and automatic human information processing: I. Detection, search, and attention. Psychological Review 84, 1–66.Google Scholar
Shiffrin, R. M. & Schneider, W. (1977). Controlled and automatic human information processing: II. Perceptual learning, automatic attending and a general theory. Psychological Review 84, 127–190.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Small, J. G. & Small, I. F. (1971). Contingent negative variation correlations with psychiatric diagnosis. Archives of General Psychiatry 25, 550–554.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Spinnler, H. (1991). The role of attention disorders in the cognitive deficits of dementia. In Handbook of Neuropsychology (ed. Boller, F. and Grafman, J.), pp. 79–121. Elsevier Science Publishers: New York.Google Scholar
Spitzer, R. L., Endicott, J. & Robins, E. (1978). Research Diagnostic Criteria for a selected group of Functional Disorders, edn. 3. Biometrics Research Division, New York State Psychiatric Institute: New York.Google Scholar
Steinhauer, S. & Zubin, I. (1982). Vulnerability to schizophrenia: information processing in the pupil and event-related potentials. In Biological Markers in Psychiatry and Neurology (ed. Hanin, I. and Usain, E.), pp. 371–385. Pergamon Press: Oxford.Google Scholar
Sternberg, S. (1969). The discovery of processing stages: extension of Donder's method. In Attention and Performance, II. (Special Issue) (ed. Koster, W. G.). Acta Psychologica 30, 276–315.Google Scholar
Stevens, J. R. (1989). The search for an anatomic basis of schizophrenia: review and update. In Neurology and Psychiatry: A Meeting of Minds (ed. Mueller, J. H.), pp. 64–87. Karger: Basel.Google Scholar
Sutter, J. M. (1956). L'anticipation. Evolution psychiatrique 1, 379–388.Google Scholar
Sweeney, J., Wetzler, S., Stokes, P. & Kocsis, J. (1989). Cognitive functioning in depression. Journal of Clinical Psychology 45, 836–842.Google Scholar
Swets, J. A., Tanner, W. C. & Birdsall, T. G. (1961). Decision processes in perception. Psychological Review 68, 301–340.Google Scholar
Titchener, E. B. (1908). Attention as Sensory Clearness. Lectures on the Elementary Psychology of Feeling and Attention, pp. 171–206. Macmillan: New York.Google Scholar
van den Bosch, R. J., Rombouts, R. P. & Van Asma, M. J. O. (1993). Subjective cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenic and depressed patients. Comprehensive Psychiatry 34, 130–136.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
van Zomeren, A. H. & Brouwer, W. N. (1992). Assessment of attention. In A Handbook of Neuropsychological Assessment (ed. Crawford, J. R., Parker, D. M. and McKinlay, W. W.), pp. 241–266. Lawrence Erlbaum: Hove, Sussex.Google Scholar
Walker, E. (1981). Attentional and neuromotor functions of schizophrenics, schizoaffectives and patients with other affective disorders. Archives of General Psychiatry 38, 1355–1358.Google Scholar
Watts, F. N., Dalgleish, T., Bource, P. & Healy, D. (1990). Memory deficit in clinical depression: processing resources and the structure of materials. Psychological Medicine 20, 345–349.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Watts, F. N., Kenna, F. P., Sharrock, R. & Trezise, L. (1986). Colour naming of phobia related words. British Journal of Psychology 77, 97–108.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Weckowicz, T. E., Nutter, R. W., Cruise, D. G. & Yonge, K. A. (1972). Speed in test performance in relation to depressive illness and age. Canadian Psychiatric Association Journal 17, (supplement 2SS), 241–250.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Weinberger, D. R., Berman, K. F. & Zec, R. F. (1986). Physiological dysfunction of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in schizophrenia: I Regional cerebral blood flow evidence. Archives of General Psychiatry 43, 114–125.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Weingartner, H., Cohen, R. M., Martello, J. D. I. & Gerdt, C. (1981). Cognitive processes in depression. Archives of General Psychiatry 38, 42–47.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Whitehead, A. (1974). Factors in the learning deficit of elderly depressives. British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 13, 201–208.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Widlöcher, D. (1983). Le ralentissement dépressif. Presses Universitaires de France (coll. Nodule): Paris.Google Scholar
Williams, J. M. G. & Nulty, D. D. (1986). Construct accessibility, depression and the emotional Stroop task: transient mood or stable structure? Personality and Individual Differences 7, 485–491.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yates, A. J. (1966). Psychological deficit. Annual Review of Psychology 17, 111–144.Google Scholar