Table 4 Escitalopram effects on emotional processing tasks
Task | Escitalopram | Placebo | Group differencea | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
CANTAB affective Go/No-Go task | ||||
Stimulus type | Words | |||
Target emotions | Positive, negative, neutral | |||
Sample size | N = 60 (placebo; 31, escitalopram; 29) | |||
Measure | Omission errors (shift blocks) | 2.9 (3.89) | 2.03 (2.4) | p = 0.843 |
Omission errors (non-shift blocks) | 2.62 (3.8) | 1.87 (2.29) | p = 0.712 | |
Affective bias (in milliseconds) | −9.22 | −1.15 | p = 0.482 | |
EMOTICOM affective Go/No-Go task | ||||
Stimulus type | Faces | |||
Target emotions | Happy, sad, neutral | |||
Sample size | N = 64 (placebo; 32, escitalopram; 32) | |||
Measure | Percentage of correct ‘hit’ responses for target emotion | |||
Target: happy, distractor: sad, condition | 92.5% | 88.1% | p = 0.470 | |
Target: happy, distractor: sad, condition | 88.8% | 88.1% | p = 0.906 | |
Affective bias RT (in milliseconds) | −0.013 | −0.012 | p = 0.896 | |
EMOTICOM social information preference task (‘Theory of mind’) | ||||
Stimulus type | Outcomes of socially ambiguous situations | |||
Target emotions | Positive, negative, neutral | |||
Sample size | N = 58 (placebo; 32, escitalopram; 27) | |||
Measure | Affective bias in scenario outcome choices (mean value) | 2.78 | 1.91 | p = 0.235 |
Stimulus type | Information type (faces, thoughts, facts) | |||
Proportion of facts (mean ± SD) | 0.15 (0.1) | 0.1 (0.07) | p = 0.017 | |
Proportion of thoughts (mean ± SD) | 0.27 (0.11) | 0.29 (0.1) | p = 0.330 | |
Proportion of faces (mean ± SD) | 0.58 (0.12) | 0.61 (0.1) | p = 0.346 | |
