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Cited by 21Neural and Behavioral Psychology StudiesAnxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive ProcessesTreatment of Major Depression

Divided attention in major depression

Thomas, Pierre, Goudemand, Michel, Rousseaux, Marc·1998·Psychiatry Research
DOI 10.1016/s0165-1781(98)00123-1
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Abstract

Depressive illness has been reported to interfere with effortful processing, which requires conscious attention. The aim of this study was to evaluate divided attention in depressed patients, as a function of the degree of difficulty of the task performed. Tasks designed to measure unimodal and bimodal reaction times were presented to 10 patients with major depression and 10 normal control subjects. Performance was evaluated both before treatment when the patients were depressed and after treatment when they had recovered. Unlike the unimodal trials, the bimodal reaction time tasks were designed to evaluate decision-making under conditions in which attention was divided between two perceptual channels. Reaction times were measured under two different conditions in order to assess the extent of the response delay induced by divided attention, modality shifting, and decision processing. During simple response tasks, the depressed patients displayed significantly greater lengthening of reaction times when their attention was divided between two perceptual channels. This cross-modal delay effect occurred both for stimuli of the same modality and when shifting between modalities. The cross-modal delay effect was evident only for the choice tests in both the depressed and the recovered patients, but only the recovered patients were as accurate as the control subjects. These results suggest that the need for decision processing in depressed patients results in a failure to allocate the mental resources required to complete interchannel shifting, when attention is divided between two perceptual channels. These data are consistent with the hypothesis that attentional regulation is impaired in major depression.

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  • Studies of unmedicated adults with major depressive disorder reveal impairments in performing two tasks simultaneously and in simultaneously attending auditory and visual stimuli to detect targets compared with healthy controls.

    “In the context of MDD, studies of unmedicated adults have revealed impairments in performing two tasks simultaneously34, and simultaneously attending both auditory and visual stimuli to detect targets35 compared with healthy controls.”

    From Paying attention to attention in depression (2019) · cites this paper as [35]

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Authors
Thomas, P., Goudemand, M., & Rousseaux, M.
Affiliations
Université de Lille (FR)
ORCID
Thomas, Pierre
Venue
Psychiatry Research
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
1998-12
Volume
81
Issue
3
Pages
309-322
ISSN
0165-1781 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1016/s0165-1781(98)00123-1
OpenAlex
W2144245744
Cited by
21
References
41
Citations by year
2026: 1 · 2024: 2 · 2021: 1 · 2020: 1 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 2
FWCI
0.43
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
www.elsevier.com/tdm/userlicense/1.0/ (tdm)
Locations
  • Psychiatry Research (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • HAL (submittedVersion)
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Pharmacology › Treatment of Major Depression
Keywords
major depressive disorder, divided attention, reaction time, attentional control, effortful processing, decision processing
MeSH terms
Adult, Attention, Decision Making, Depressive Disorder, Major, Major Depressive Disorder, Female, Fluoxetine, Humans, Male, Mianserin, Middle Aged, Reaction Time, Fluvoxamine, Antidepressive Agents, Second-Generation

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