TITLE:
Computerized Victoria Stroop Test in Adult Unipolar Depressed Patients and Healthy Subjects: Influence of Age and Gender
AUTHORS:
Marco Moniz, Saul Neves de Jesus, Eduardo Gonçalves, João Viseu, Ana Sofia Baptista, Andreia Pacheco
KEYWORDS:
Unipolar Depression, Victoria Stroop Test (VST), Inhibitory Control, Normative Data
JOURNAL NAME:
Psychology,
Vol.7 No.1,
January
5,
2016
ABSTRACT: Alterations in executive functioning are frequent in depressive patients, being the common appearance of difficulties in inhibitory control. This study aimed to compare the performance of 31 non-psychotic unipolar depressed subjects (22 women and 9 men, with a mean age of 43.81 years old [SD = 14.78]) to 31 healthy controls (21 women and 10 men, with a mean age of 42.77 years old [SD = 13.94]) in a computerized version of Victoria Stroop Test (VST), an instrument that assessed the inhibitory control. Significant differences between depressed patients and healthy controls are concerning time to complete dots, neutral words and color words, as well as in interference trial. A clear influence of the variable age in both groups was also identified, having older subjects (over 50 years old) exhibited slower performances, showing a shared variance between 40% and 55% regarding depressive subjects and between 31% and 55% concerning healthy controls.