Depression and the processing of emotional stimuli: A study of semantic priming

Abstract

This study used a semantic priming paradigm to test spreading activation network models of the effects of depression on attention and memory. Semantic priming and recognition memory for positive, neutral, and negative words were tested in depressed and matched control subjects. Stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between primes and target strings was manipulated to distinguish between automatic and controlled routes for the spread of activation. In unprimed lexical decision, depressives were slower to respond to neutral than to emotional words at the short SOA, suggesting tonic activation of emotional concepts in these subjects. However, depressives also showed enhanced automatic priming to neutral words, and reduced priming to emotional words, suggesting that depressives may be impaired in the automatic association of emotional concepts. On recognition memory, depressives committed most false positive responses to negative words, whereas controls committed most false positives to positive words, a finding interpreted in terms of elaboration strategies. Implications of the data for current network models of depression are discussed.