Affective bias in internal attention shifting among depressed youth

Abstract The present study compared the performance of depressed youths and healthy controls on a modified mental counting task. The mental counting task was designed to capture processes associated with shifting the internal focus of attention by requiring participants to count random runs of words...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Psychiatry research 2011-05, Vol.187 (1), p.125-129
Main Authors: Lo, Barbara Chuen Yee, Allen, Nicholas B
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Adult and adolescent clinical studies
Aged
Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity - etiology
Attention switching
Bias
Biological and medical sciences
Depression
Depression - complications
Depression - psychology
Emotions - physiology
Female
Humans
Male
Mathematics
Medical sciences
Middle Aged
Mood disorders
Neuropsychological Tests
Photic Stimulation
Psychiatric Status Rating Scales
Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychopathology. Psychiatry
Reaction Time - physiology
Self Report
Stimulus affectivity
Vocabulary
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Summary:Abstract The present study compared the performance of depressed youths and healthy controls on a modified mental counting task. The mental counting task was designed to capture processes associated with shifting the internal focus of attention by requiring participants to count random runs of words appearing on a computer screen. The words belonged to two different categories, and participants were required to maintain a count of the number of words in each category. Participants' reaction time to successfully update their counts and call for subsequent stimuli was measured. In particular, two versions of the modified counting task were developed: one incorporating neutral words and the other affective words. Overall, our findings in reaction time analysis suggest that depressed patients exhibited greater difficulty switching their internal focus of attention in the affective task when compared to healthy controls, even when controlling for their rate of accuracy. However, there was no significant difference between the groups during the neutral task. Results support the hypothesis that depression is related to impaired internal attention shifting when processing affective material.
ISSN:0165-1781
1872-7123
DOI:10.1016/j.psychres.2010.10.001