خلاصة:
Objective: Cognitive deficits play an important role in differential diagnostics, prognosis
and rehabilitation of people with psychological disorders. Attention problems have profound
impact on the therapeutic response, risk of relapse, function and quality of life in people with
major depressive disorder and schizophrenia. This study compared selective attention of
people with schizophrenia, Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), and healthy controls.
Methods: The sample consisted of 16 hospitalized schizophrenics, 16 with major depressive
disorder, and 16 matched healthy controls. The Stroop color word task was presented to the
participants, and the RTs and error rates in naming the color stimuli were recorded. Data were
analyzed by one-way ANOVA and multivariate regressions.
Results: Those in the MDD group and healthy controls showed the highest and the lowest
error rates and RT averages, respectively. In addition, the demographic/personal variables were
also used to predict the performance measures.
Conclusion: The findings gave support to the notion of morbidity-specific selective attention
impairment. The higher levels of interference in the MDD group have been explained in line
with the filtration deficit conceptualization.
ملخص الجهاز:
"This study compared selective attention of people with schizophrenia, Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), and healthy controls.
Based on their findings, the only measure for which both the Scz and control group differed was the SCWT, where those with affec- tive disorders showed the highest levels of performance impairments.
They finished with the claim that response inhibition defi- cits may be a common cognitive dysfunction in affective disorders despite the diagnosis but not in those with Scz. It is worth recalling that some studies showed no dif- ference in the selective attention measure between Sczs, MDD, bipolar disorder and those with other psycho- sis disorders (Verdoux & Liraud, 2000).
The ability to filter and limit the focus of attention on Scz is rela- tively intact, and the Scz group can filter the incongruent words-color names better than the MDDs. Depression was found to be associated with reduced distractor inhi- bition (MacQueen, Galway, Goldberg & Tipper, 2003).
e. error rates and RTs) were the same, except for age that was added on top of the medical history and the number of suicidal attempts to predict RTs. This find- ing is in line with the earlier studies that talk about inter- ference as a vulnerability measure in MDD (Mathews & MacLeod, 2005).
, 2010), the age factor played a significant role in predict- ing the RTs. In summary, when considering the relative importance of the error rates and RTs in predicting the cognitive psychopathology of MDD, it is plausible to think of the observed Stroop performance of MDDs as in a morbidity-specific attention deficits framework."