Attentional resources in major depression

Depression appears to interfere more with effortful processes than with aut omatic processes. This study aimed to examine attentional resources allocation by means of RT on effortful detection tasks. Ten depressed inpatients during illness and at recovery and ten healthy control subjects were given simple and choice r eaction time tasks. Two types of effort demanding conditions were assessed (1) the combination of two concurrent tasks and (2) tasks involving decisio n making. Depressed patients improved from single to dual tasks whereas recovered and control worsened. Depressed patients showed a significant time and accurac y impairment when decision processes were involved. The decision making imp airment co-occurred with a deficit in the orientation of the attention. The decline with decision making was not worsened when the choice task combine d with a concurrent task and was reversible with recovery. This pattern of results exhibits differential sensitivity between two effor tful tasks. Depressives may be able to mobilize resources to complete effor tful tasks as far as decision processing is not required.