An Examination of Executive Control Biases and Rumination in Currently, Remitted and Never Depressed Individuals
Abstract
Cognitive theories of depression propose that biases in executive control may be involved in the development, maintenance, and/or recurrence of depression. One suggested mechanism is that executive control biases may contribute to depressive rumination. The primary purpose of this study was to comprehensively evaluate depression-related biases in three components of executive control, namely inhibition, working memory updating, and set shifting. The secondary purpose was to evaluate relationships among biases in executive control and rumination. Currently depressed (n = 53), remitted depressed (n = 55), and non-clinical control (n = 51) participants were tested on separate computer-based paradigms designed to measure inhibition, working memory updating, and set shifting, respectively, involving emotional stimuli. As hypothesized, currently depressed participants exhibited biases in each of the executive control components. Specifically, currently depressed participants showed a reduced ability to inhibit the processing of negative distracting stimuli and to update working memory with emotional information, relative to control participants. Currently depressed participants also had greater difficulty shifting away from an emotion-relevant task set than from an emotion-irrelevant task set, whereas control participants did not show this bias. Remitted depressed participants did not demonstrate similar biases to currently depressed participants. Hypotheses regarding the relationships among executive control biases and rumination were largely unsupported; possible explanations for these findings are considered. This study is the most comprehensive evaluation of executive control biases in clinical depression to date, and provides novel insight into the nature of depression-related biases. The theoretical and clinical relevance of the findings, the limitations of the study, and directions for future research are discussed.
Description
Keywords
Psychology--Clinical
Citation
Quigley, L. (2017). An Examination of Executive Control Biases and Rumination in Currently, Remitted and Never Depressed Individuals (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/24876