School of Psychology, Keynes College, University of Kent, Canterbury, England.
School of Psychology, Politics and Sociology, Canterbury Christchurch University, Canterbury, England.
Sci Rep. 2017 Nov 1;7(1):14821. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-13922-y.
Research has identified impairments in Theory of Mind (ToM) abilities in depressed patients, particularly in relation to tasks involving empathetic responses and belief reasoning. We aimed to build on this research by exploring the relationship between depressed mood and cognitive ToM, specifically visual perspective-taking ability. High and low depressed participants were eye-tracked as they completed a perspective-taking task, in which they followed the instructions of a 'director' to move target objects (e.g. a "teapot with spots on") around a grid, in the presence of a temporarily-ambiguous competitor object (e.g. a "teapot with stars on"). Importantly, some of the objects in the grid were occluded from the director's (but not the participant's) view. Results revealed no group-based difference in participants' ability to use perspective cues to identify the target object. All participants were faster to select the target object when the competitor was only available to the participant, compared to when the competitor was mutually available to the participant and director. Eye-tracking measures supported this pattern, revealing that perspective directed participants' visual search immediately upon hearing the ambiguous object's name (e.g. "teapot"). We discuss how these results fit with previous studies that have shown a negative relationship between depression and ToM.
研究已经确定抑郁患者在心理理论（ToM）能力方面存在损伤，特别是在涉及同理心反应和信念推理的任务中。我们旨在通过探索抑郁情绪与认知 ToM 之间的关系，特别是视觉视角-taking 能力，来进一步研究这一问题。在进行视角-taking 任务时，高抑郁和低抑郁参与者被眼动追踪，在任务中，他们按照“导演”的指示移动目标对象（例如，“有斑点的茶壶”）在网格周围，同时存在暂时模糊的竞争对象（例如，“有星星的茶壶”）。重要的是，网格中的一些对象从导演（但不是参与者）的视角被遮挡。结果显示，参与者使用视角线索识别目标对象的能力没有组间差异。与竞争对象对参与者和导演都可用时相比，当竞争对象仅对参与者可用时，所有参与者选择目标对象的速度都更快。眼动追踪测量结果支持了这一模式，表明视角引导参与者在听到模糊对象的名字（例如“茶壶”）后立即进行视觉搜索。我们讨论了这些结果如何与先前表明抑郁与 ToM 之间存在负相关的研究相吻合。
