FIGURE DRAWING AND PSYCHOMOTOR RETARDATION - PRELIMINARY-REPORT

Psychomotor retardation, a general slowing of activity which is one of the central characteristics of depression, was investigated by measur ing reaction time and movement duration in drawing tasks. Twenty depre ssive patients and 20 normal controls participated in two tasks in whi ch either simple or more complex figures had to be copied as fast as p ossible on a digitizer. In general, patients needed more time to compl ete the drawing tasks than controls, and they performed them different ly. Six patients, who could be tested before and after treatment, show ed changes in drawing speed that correlated with clinical improvement. These results suggest that psychomotor retardation might be fruitfull y studied by measuring the kinematic aspects of drawing and might prov ide objective parameters to measure progress in therapy.