Study of the Effects of Subsensory Influence on the System of Associations in Patients with Depressive Disorders

Abstract

The article is devoted to the actual problem of studying the effects of unconscious perception and processing of subliminal visual verbal stimuli. Certain methodological problems arising in the research of transient perceptual-informational processes are defined. Significant differences in the course of such processes in healthy individuals and in patients with affective, primarily depressive disorders are emphasized. A description of the Technique of subsensory formating the associations, developed for researching the impact of subliminal visual verbal stimuli on psychosemantic structures of consciousness, is provided. The data on the examination of a sample of 69 people using the new technique are presented. The sample included 37 (53.62%) persons suffering from various forms of depressive disorders and 32 (46.38%) healthy persons of the control group. It is shown that an ultra-short exposure to the subsensory verbal stimuli with positive psychosemantic sense, demonstrated at the same time as the subject's attention is focused on the suprasensory target word, leads to a significant increase in positive associations with this word. It is noted that such effects are more pronounced in depressed patients than in healthy individuals. It is concluded that the obtained data open new prospects in the context of the development of modern personalized psychocorrective programs.