DEPRESIVNOSTI VIZUELNO PAMĆENJE SPECIFIČNIH STIMULUSA (EMOTIKONA)

Depression is a state of reduced psychophysical activity that is accompanied by various changes in cognitive, emotional and social functioning. Previous studies have found that depression leads to changes in the recognition of the emotions of others, makes it difficult to direct attention and significantly impairs visual memory. The main goal of this research is to examine the relations between depressive symptoms and visual memory of specific stimuli that show emotions. We also want to examine whether the intensity of depressive symptoms is related to longer reaction time in the experimental task, as well as whether the accuracy of the emoticon’s visual memory depends on the set size. The research was conducted on a sample of 84 participants, students of Faculty of Philosophy in Banja Luka (90% female). The PHQ-9 questionnaire was used to assess depressive symptoms. Visual memory task was created in SuperLab 4.1. for Windows.The results show that there is a partial contribution of moderate depression to the accuracy of emoticon memory with sadness expression. No partial contribution of any category of depression to the memory accuracy of emoticons with the expression of happiness has been determined. A statistically significant negative correlation for the category of “sad” stimuli was obtained between the expression of depressive symptoms and the response time in the experimental task, while no statistically significant correlation was obtained for the second category of stimuli. It was also found that the number of errors increases with the set size. These results can be explained by negative bias and cognitive load in information processing. Key words: visual memory, depression, emoticons, expression of happiness, expression of sadness