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Depression: A Breakdown of Perceptual Defence?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

Mary Powell  and
David R. Hemsley
Mary Powell
Affiliation:
Institute of Psychiatry, University of London, Denmark Hill, London SE5 8AF
David R. Hemsley*
Affiliation:
Institute of Psychiatry, University of London, Denmark Hill, London SE5 8AF
*
∗Correspondence
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Summary

The effect of depressed mood on the tachistoscopic recognition of neutral/unpleasant words was investigated in a group of 18 depressed inpatients and in 17 normal controls. A 50% recognition threshold for 30 neutral words was calculated for each subject, in order to exclude the effects of depressive slowness on the experimental task. Each subject was tachistoscopically presented with a series of experimental words (30 neutral/30 unpleasant) at his 50% level, and the ratio of neutral to unpleasant words recognised calculated. Depressed subjects tended to recognise a higher ratio of unpleasant to neutral words.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 145 , Issue 4 , October 1984 , pp. 358 - 362
Copyright
Copyright © 1984 The Royal College of Psychiatrists 

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