Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-t6hkb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-14T10:20:07.228Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

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
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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 

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

Beck, A. T. (1967) Depression; Clinical, Experimental and Theoretical Aspects. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Bower, G. H. (1981) Mood and memory. American Psychologist, 36, 129–48.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Broadbent, D. E. (1973) In Defence of Empirical Psychology. London: Methuen.Google Scholar
Broadbent, D. E. & Gregory, M. (1967) Perception of emotionally toned words. Nature, 215, 581–4.Google Scholar
Clark, D. M., Teasdale, J. D., Broadbent, D. E. & Martin, M. (1983) Effect of mood on lexical decisions Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 21(3), 175–8.Google Scholar
Dixon, N. F. (1981) Preconscious Processing. Chichester: John Wiley.Google Scholar
Fogarty, S. J. & Hemsley, D. R. (1983) Depression and the accessibility of memories. British Journal of Psychiatry, 142, 232–7.Google Scholar
Gerrig, R. J. & Bower, G. (1982) Emotional influences on word recognition. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 19(4), 197–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hardy, G. R. & Legge, D. (1968) Cross modal induction of changes in sensory thresholds. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 20, 20–9.Google Scholar
Lloyd, G. G. & Lishman, W. A. (1975) The effects of depression on the speed of recall of pleasant and unpleasant experiences. Psychological Medicine, 5, 173–80.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mathews, A. & Wertheimer, M. (1958) A ‘pure’ measure of perceptual defence uncontaminated by response suppression. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 57, 373–6.Google Scholar
Teasdale, J. D. & Fogarty, S. J. (1979) Differential effects of induced mood on retrieval of pleasant and unpleasant events from episodic memory. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 88, 248–57.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Teasdale, J. D., Fogarty, S. J. & Rezin, V. (1978) The effects of reducing frequency of negative thoughts on the mood of depressed patients—tests of a cognitive model of depression. British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 17, 65–74.Google Scholar
Velten, E. (1968) A laboratory task for the induction of mood states. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 6, 473–82.Google Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.