Attention Bias and Recognition of Sexual Images in Depression

Ondřej Novák, Klára Bártová and Kateřina Klapilová
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Ondřej Novák: Faculty of Humanities, Charles University, 182 00 Prague, Czech Republic
Klára Bártová: Faculty of Humanities, Charles University, 182 00 Prague, Czech Republic
Kateřina Klapilová: Faculty of Humanities, Charles University, 182 00 Prague, Czech Republic

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 16, 1-15

Abstract: Depression greatly affects sexuality. Theoretical and empirical evidence account for the existence of attention bias to sex-related stimuli. This attention bias might be impaired in depression, resulting in sexual problems. A sample of 13 patients with depression and 13 matched healthy controls were tested using the dot-probe and picture recognition task to measure attention to erotic images. No difference in attention to sex-related stimuli ( ? 2 = 0, p = 0.22) and in memory bias ( ? 2 = 0, p = 0.72) was found between the two groups. Explorative analyses were conducted to identify the sexual content-induced delay effect in the data, assess variability differences, and compare trial-level bias score-based indexes between groups. Across all analyses, there was little evidence for depression affecting sexual-related cognitive processing, and even this might be explained by other means. Our results suggest that restrained attention is probably not the main factor behind sexual problems in depression.

Keywords: attention bias; sexual response; sexuality; depression; dot probe task; recognition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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