Processing of emotional properties of stimuli by depressed and normal subjects

This study investigated whether depressed subjects differ from controls in their ability to appreciate emotional aspects of verbal material, or in their use of emotional qualities of stimuli in learning and remembering. When asked to rate the degree of emotionality of words, depressed subjects did so essentially identically with controls. However, despite apparently similar evaluatory processing, the depressed failed to remember as well as controls. Depressed subjects were more dependent than controls on both high emotionality and high stimulus concreteness for recognition memory, but were less benefited by these properties in free recall. While providing no evidence for deficits specific to emotionality, our results suggest that relatively shallow processing of semantic aspects of stimuli may be an important factor in the memory impairment of depression.