Bredemeier Keith, Berenbaum Howard, Brockmole James R, Boot Walter R, Simons Daniel J, Most Steven B
Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States.
Acta Psychol (Amst). 2012 Jan;139(1):137-45. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2011.11.007. Epub 2011 Dec 7.
Multi-tasking can increase susceptibility to distraction, affecting whether irrelevant objects capture attention. Similarly, people with depression often struggle to concentrate when performing cognitively demanding tasks. This parallel suggests that depression is like multi-tasking. To test this idea, we examined relations between self-reported levels of anhedonic depression (a dimension that reflects the unique aspects of depression not shared with anxiety or other forms of distress) and attention capture by salient items in a visual search task. Furthermore, we compared these relations to the effects of performing a concurrent auditory task on attention capture. Strikingly, both multi-tasking and elevated levels of anhedonic depression were associated with increased capture by uniquely colored items, but decreased capture by abruptly appearing items. At least with respect to attention capture and distraction, depression seems to be functionally comparable to juggling a second, unrelated cognitive task.
一心多用会增加分心的易感性，影响无关物体是否吸引注意力。同样，抑郁症患者在执行认知要求较高的任务时往往难以集中注意力。这种相似性表明抑郁症类似于一心多用。为了验证这一想法，我们研究了自我报告的快感缺失性抑郁水平（一个反映抑郁症独特方面而不与焦虑或其他形式的痛苦共有的维度）与视觉搜索任务中显著项目的注意力捕捉之间的关系。此外，我们将这些关系与同时进行听觉任务对注意力捕捉的影响进行了比较。令人惊讶的是，一心多用和快感缺失性抑郁水平的升高都与独特颜色项目的注意力捕捉增加有关，但与突然出现项目的注意力捕捉减少有关。至少在注意力捕捉和分心方面，抑郁症在功能上似乎与同时处理第二项不相关的认知任务相当。
