Gebauer, S. (Sabine) (2019) Individuals at increased risk for depression and generalized anxiety disorder show faster emotional working memory updating. thesis, Medicine.
Full text available on request.Abstract
Introduction: Major depressive disorder (MDD) and anxiety disorders are highly prevalent and associated with cognitive impairment and dysfunctional emotion regulation. Efficient affective working memory (WM) updating is crucial in emotion regulation. Emotional WM updating tasks are used to study cognitive biases in processing emotional content. This study aims to support previous findings regarding an association between maladaptive affective WM updating and symptoms of depression and to identify if these findings also hold for symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). Methods: In a convenience sample of 73 participants it was analysed whether self-reported scores for the tendency towards MDD and GAD had an effect on reaction time in an affective WM updating task (zero-/one-back task). Results: Participants with increasing risk for GAD showed slower reaction times in pairing of negative compared to neutral pictures. With increasing risk for GAD or MDD, reaction times were significantly faster when perseverating on or breaking to emotional content compared to the according neutral conditions. With increasing risk for GAD, participants were significantly faster when integrating emotional content as compared to these processes in the neutral WM task. Conclusion: Faster processing of emotional content compared to neutral content might be due to a pre-existing tendency for facilitated processing of emotional content, a possible attentional bias towards negative stimuli and limited elaboration on positive content in WM. The findings of cognitive biases could explain dysfunctional emotion regulation in individuals at risk for GAD or MDD and may represent a risk factor for the chronicity of both disorders.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Thesis) |
|---|---|
| Supervisor name: | Faculty supervisor: and Kuks, Prof. Dr. J.B.M. and University of Groningen |
| Supervisor name: | Second supervisor: and Müller, Prof. Dr. med. Dr. phil. Astrid and Department of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy and Hannover Medical School |
| Faculty: | Medical Sciences |
| Date Deposited: | 25 Jun 2020 10:48 |
| Last Modified: | 25 Jun 2020 10:48 |
| URI: | https://umcg.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/958 |
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