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Paper On Generalized Anxiety Disorder

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The purpose of the study done by Weinberg was to determine whether or not the presence of Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) or any combination of the detailed above could contribute to variation in both the ability to monitor errors as well as the sensitivity to error commission. The article theorizes that those patients diagnosed with GAD or OCD would have an enhanced error-related negativity (ERN) level in comparison to the controls, but not when a diagnosis of MDD was also present. They also predicted that those patients that suffered with MDD, however, would not differ from the controls in terms of their ERN levels. The experiment involved psychiatric patients with …show more content…

The order of these trials were shown at random. All stimuli were shown for 200 milliseconds. After consent was given and the proceedings of the examination were briefly explained, EEG electrodes were attached to the subjects and they were given detailed instructions. Participants performed multiple tasks throughout the experiment, and the order of the tasks were counterbalanced across the participants. The participants were seated approximately two feet viewing distance and were instructed to press the right button mouse button if the center arrow was facing to the right and press the left button if the center arrow was facing to the left. Before the exam that was used for analysis, participants were given a practice block containing 30 trials where they were instructed to be as quick and accurate as possible. Then, the actual task was administered with 11 blocks of 30 trials. The participants received feedback on their performance. If a participant received a score of 75% or lower, a message of “Please try to be more accurate” was given. On the contrary, if the participant received above 90% a message of “Please try to respond faster” was displayed. However, if a participant was between 75% and 90%, the participant received a message that said “You’re doing a great job.” Results Consistent with many different pieces of research previously done, it was determined that a diagnosis of GAD alone was characterized by a larger ERN than controls with a measurement

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