Factors in the Learning Deficit of Elderly Depressives

Separate groups of elderly depressives were tested on serial learning tasks prior to treatment or on remission of symptoms, finding no evidence of differential impairments for the duller depressed patients.

Abstract

Separate groups of elderly depressives were tested on serial learning tasks prior to treatment or on remission of symptoms. Those tested whilst ill made fewer correct responses and transposition errors and more omission errors than the remitted patients. There was no evidence that the depressed patients were differentially impaired whilst learning unfamiliar material or with pacing, although the latter was not looked at with rapid speeds. Correct responding tended to be related to vocabulary knowledge and (negatively) to severity of subjective feelings of depression and tension. There was no evidence of differential impairments for the duller depressed patients. These results, together with those of earlier workers, are considered and a tentative model is proposed.