Depression: a breakdown of perceptual defence?

The effect of depressed mood on the tachistoscopic recognition of neutral/unpleasant words was investigated in a group of 18 depressed inpatients and in 17 normal controls. A 50% recognition threshold for 30 neutral words was calculated for each subject, in order to exclude the effects of depressive slowness on the experimental task. Each subject was tachistoscopically presented with a series of experimental words (30 neutral/30 unpleasant) at his 50% level, and the ratio of neutral to unpleasant words recognised calculated. Depressed subjects tended to recognise a higher ratio of unpleasant to neutral words.