REASONING STRATEGIES IN DEPRESSION - EFFECTS OF DEPRESSED MOOD ON A SYLLOGISM TASK

This study compared depressed undergraduate subjects with controls on a syllogistic reasoning task. Each syllogism consisted of two premises, the first relating the subject to a middle term and the second relating the predicate to a middle term. The subject's task was to draw the appropriate conclusion relating the subject to the predicate. The findings revealed a significant difference between the groups in ability to solve the problems correctly, and an examination of the types of errors made showed that the depressed subjects made significantly more errors which involved a failure to integrate information from the two premises to solve the problems. Such errors are thought to be associated with working memory capacity limitations. The findings are discussed in relation to models of depression postulating deficits in effortful processing.