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Unimpaired automatic processing of verbal information in the course of clinical depression
Author(s) -
Dannlowski Udo,
Kersting Anette,
Arolt Volker,
LaleeMentzel Judith,
Donges UtaSusan,
Suslow Thomas
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
depression and anxiety
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.634
H-Index - 129
eISSN - 1520-6394
pISSN - 1091-4269
DOI - 10.1002/da.20173
Subject(s) - stimulus onset asynchrony , psychology , priming (agriculture) , anxiety , audiology , cognition , stimulus (psychology) , cognitive psychology , lexical decision task , clinical psychology , psychiatry , medicine , botany , germination , biology
In this study automatic processing of verbal information was investigated in 22 clinically depressed inpatients and 22 healthy controls in a longitudinal design. A semantic priming task with word pronunciation was administered twice, about 7 weeks apart. Following brief presentations of prime words, subjects had to read target words aloud as quickly as possible. Prime words were directly related, indirectly related, or unrelated to the target words. Stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) of prime and target was 250 ms. In the course of inpatient treatment, patients recovered significantly. Semantic priming occurred in both study groups for the directly and indirectly related conditions across both testing times. As expected, directly related primes resulted in stronger priming than indirectly related primes. Patients and controls did not differ in semantic priming at either time or relatedness condition. Size of priming was not associated with depression severity, anxiety level, intelligence, medication, or clinical features. We conclude that depression is not characterized by dysfunctional automatic processing of verbal information. Depression and Anxiety 23:325–330, 2006. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.