Background: Theorists differ in their opinion whether interpersonal difficulties in depression is associated more with perceptual impairment or with emotional bias. The present study intended to resolve such differences of opinion.
Method: Major depressives, general medical patients, and non-patient controls were administered three visuospatial and two affective tasks to examine the nature of performance deficit associated with each group.
Results: Major depressives were found significantly impaired in both visuospatial and affective tasks in comparison to general medical patients, who in turn, were impaired than non-patient controls.
Conclusion: Major depressives' perceptual deficit is pervasive and not specific to affective categories.
Limitation: The study could have been more informative if more psychiatric groups had been included as subjects.
Clinical relevance: Improvement in depressives' ability for visuospatial and affective tasks may be considered as a marker of their clinical improvement.