SummaryThis review (part I and II) contains an overview of the literature of the past fifteen years over psychomotor retardation in depressed patients, as measured by the following methods:observation scales (part I);observation, coding and analysis of specific nonverbal behaviour (part I);speech research (part I);(choice) reaction time tasks (part II);analysis of gross motor activity (part II);of fine motor behaviour (part II).In each section the results of the different studies are summarized and discussed, in order to answer the following questions: (a) did the depressed patients show any retardation?, (b) how did this retardation manifest itself?, (c) what was the nature of the retardation?, (d) were there any correlations with the results of other methods? and (e) what were the effects of antidepressive treatment?
A Sequence Analysis of Nonverbal Behaviour and Deception