ABSTRACT
Objective To explore the reaction time and attention bias characteristics of patients with first-episode depressive disorder.MethodsTotally 32 patients with first-episode depressive disorder (MD group) and 24 non-depression control participants(NC group) matched with MD group on age,gender and education level were enrolled in the study.The clinical symptoms were assessed by Beck Depression Inventory(BDI).All participants completed a dot-probe task to assess attentional preference for facial stimuli with varying valence (happy,sad and neutral facial expressions).ResultsThe reaction times(RTs) of MD group was longer than that of NC group in the dot-probe task ((468.6±87.7)ms,(451.7±82.5)ms,P<0.01).The four-way ANOVA revealed a significant main effect of prime duration,indicating overall shorter RTs on primes with longer duration ((476.9±88.4)ms vs (456.2±82.7)ms vs (447.7±83.9)ms,P<0.01).Compared with NC group,the scores of attention bias for sad faces were decreased in MD group ((7.43±26.4)ms vs (-4.97±19.5)ms,P<0.05).With the longer duration of presentation,the score of attention maintenance of emotional facies for MD group were increased (happy faces: (-11.0±4.8)ms,(2.2±6.9)ms,(6.1±8.5)ms;angry faces:(-1.6±7.5)ms,(6.5±8.6)ms,(14.9±6.7)ms).The adherence score of attention to happy faces were decreased ((1.8±5.6)ms,(-8.2±6.7)ms,(-8.7±7.1)ms),while the score of adherence score towards sad faces were increased ((-7.6±7.2)ms,(-2.6±8.5)ms,(1.5±6.2)ms) with increasing prime duration.ConclusionPatients with first-episode depressive disorder have slower response to emotional faces and associated with attentional bias for sad faces.With the increasing prime duration,it is more and more obvious to attentional bias in the two aspects of allocation and adherence.