Semantic priming in major depressive state

• Published in: Psychiatry research Vol. 78; no. 1; pp. 29 - 44
• Main Authors: Georgieff, Nicolas, Ford Dominey, Peter, Michel, François, Marie-cardine, Michel, Dalery, Jean
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Shannon Elsevier Ireland Ltd 20.03.1998; Elsevier
• Subjects: Adult; Adult and adolescent clinical studies; Analysis of Variance; Attention - physiology; Biological and medical sciences; Case-Control Studies; Cognition; Cognition - physiology; Cues; Depression; Depressive Disorder - physiopathology; Female; Humans; Language processing; Male; Medical sciences; Memory - physiology; Middle Aged; Mood disorders; Motivation; Neuropsychological Tests; Priming; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Reaction Time - physiology; Reading; Semantics; Depression; Priming; Cognition; Language processing; Mood disorder; Human; Semantic relation; Language; Priming effect; Information processing; Lexical decision

We studied semantic priming in 20 major depressive subjects. The methodology used was a visual lexical decision task. Semantic priming is the facilitation of target word recognition (shortening of response time) by the prior presentation of a semantically related context (a prime word). It relies on...