Reasoning in depression: Impairment on a concept discrimination learning task

Abstract

This study compared depressed and nondepressed undergraduates identified by the Beck Depression Inventory on concept discrimination learning problems. In two experiments, both groups generally performed at ceiling when solving simpler 1 -and 2-dimensional problems, but the depressed subjects showed significant impairment on 4-dimensional problems. The first experiment investigated the role of storage in task performance. The second experiment was designed to focus attention at critical stages, and also manipulated storage demands. The depressed subjects in each experiment solved fewer problems correctly and made significantly more errors when listing hypotheses; there was little evidence that the experimental manipulations differentially facilitated their performance. The findings are considered in relation to current models of cognitive function in depression.

How do we learn in a negative mood? Effects of a negative mood on transfer and learning

“…Yet, both everyday educational and clinical experience and research indicate that strong negative emotions such as anxiety and fear of examinations (cf. Pekrun & Jerusalem, 1996) or depression (Baker & Shannon, 1995;Brown, Scott, Bench, & Dolan, 1994) can have potent adverse effects on cognitive processing and can impair learning performance as well as performance on transfer tasks. The issue of how these effects can be reduced has been widely discussed in the educational and clinical literature.…”

Early Detection and Differential Diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease and Depression with Neuropsychological Tasks

“…Evidence from lesion studies in rats [53], monkeys [54] and humans [55], as well as functional imaging studies in normal human volunteers [56,57], suggest that those temporal lobe structures particularly susceptible to early AD, such as the hippocampus, parahippocampal gyrus and entorhinal cortex are implicated in the main cognitive component of the PAL test, such as stimulus-context and object-location association processes and episodic memory. By contrast, the cognitive deficits in depression have been attributed to underlying impairments in 'effortful' rather than 'automatic' processing, being seen on tasks requiring strategy and the re-allocation of cognitive resources [58,59], and associated with prefrontal cortex dysfunction [60]. A profile of impairments on tasks sensitive to frontal lobe dysfunction was found in elderly depressed patients by Beats et al [50], and in the present study, impairments were most pronounced on attentional and executive tasks, and on those mnemonic tasks which would be expected to be benefit from a strategic approach, i.e.…”

Executive function in depression: the role of performance strategies in aiding depressed and non-depressed participants

“…Both cognitive and motivational factors might potentially contribute to depressive impairments in strategy usage. In relation to motivational accounts, attempts to ameliorate depressive impairments by manipulating incentives29 have not proved fruitful, and Baker and Channon22 found no differences in response to predetermined negative and positive feedback in dysphoric participants. However, there is some supporting evidence.…”

“…On reasoning tasks, the findings seem less straightforward. Baker and Channon22found that focusing participants’ attention on the task at the critical stages was not sufficient to ameliorate dysphoric impairment on relatively complex concept formation problems. However, Hertel and Knoedler32 reported that giving a hint in relation to solving logic problems impaired the performance of control participants, but not that of dysphoric patients.…”

“…For instance, it may serve simply to increase the allocation of attentional resources to task performance, or might lead more specifically to the use of a semantic encoding strategy. In the case of more complex problem solving tasks, which often make multiple concurrent demands on attentional resources, manipulations that simply increase the focus of attention on task performance may be insufficient to facilitate usage of complex strategies necessary for effective performance 22. To facilitate performance, it is presumably necessary but not always sufficient to focus sufficient attentional resources on the problem.…”