Copyright 2012 Aileen M. Echiverri-Cohen - University of Washington

Sheehan Disability Scale (SDS; Sheehan, 1986) assesses disruption caused by symptoms
in work, social activities, and home life. SDS uses an 11-point scale to evaluate disability in
each of these three areas, ranging from 0 (not at all) to 10 (very severely). A global functional
impairment score reflecting total impairment in work, social, and home functioning was used.
The scale shows adequate reliability and construct validity (Leon, Shear, Portera, & Klerman,
1992).
Shipley Institute of Living Scale (Shipley, 1967) is a 60-item, self-administered test that
assesses cognitive functioning in areas of verbal intelligence and abstract reasoning ability.
Scores from the verbal intelligence and abstract reasoning subscales yield a composite score for
the full scale (Paulson & Lin, 1970). The composite score of the two subscales was used to
assess the effects of general cognitive ability. The measure shows good convergent validity with
the Weschler Adult Intelligence Scale, (Kaufman, 1990).
Materials
Attentional blink. To provide a behavioral measure of temporal inhibition, a visual AB
task was used (Raymond et al., 1992). Specifically, AB was made up of sequences with one or
two visual targets (T) embedded in a stream of 16 to 20 distractors (D), referred to as rapid serial
visual presentation (RSVP). The target set (T1, T2) consisted of letters (ACEJKRTY), and the
distractor set consisted of numerals (23456789). AB was assessed using dual target trials that
involved identification of two targets, where T1 was separated from T2 by 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 serial
positions, which was defined as the lag length (L1 - L5). Lag length was defined as the interval
with 1 to 4 distractors separating a target from a distractor.
AB presentation was controlled by Eprime software v 1.0 (Psychology Software Tools,
Inc.) and presented on a 17-inch Dell monitor. All stimuli were presented in size 48 Times New
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