General and Specific Dimensions of Mood Symptoms Are Associated With Impairments in Common Executive Function in Adolescence and Young Adulthood

Abstract

Both unipolar and bipolar depression have been linked with impairments in executive functioning (EF). In particular, mood symptom severity is associated with differences in common EF, a latent measure of general EF abilities. The relationship between mood disorders and EF is particularly salient in adolescence and young adulthood when the ongoing development of EF intersects with a higher risk of mood disorder onset. However, it remains unclear if common EF impairments have associations with specific symptom dimensions of mood pathology such as blunted positive affect, mood instability, or physiological arousal, or if differences in common EF more broadly relate to what is shared across various symptom domains, such as general negative affect or distress. To address this question, bifactor models can be applied to simultaneously examine the shared and unique contributions of particular mood symptom dimensions. However, no studies to our knowledge have examined bifactor models of mood symptoms in relation to measures of common EF. This study examined associations between common EF and general vs. specific symptom dimensions (anhedonia, physiological arousal, and mania) using structural equation modeling in adolescents and young adults with varying severity of mood symptoms (n = 495, ages = 13–25 years, 68.69% female). A General Depression factor capturing shared variance across symptoms statistically predicted lower Common EF. Additionally, a factor specific to physiological arousal was associated with lower Common EF. Anhedonia-specific and Mania-specific factors were not significantly related to Common EF. Altogether, these results indicate that deficits in common EF are driven by, or reflect, general features of mood pathology that are shared across symptom dimensions but are also specifically associated with physiological arousal.

An analysis of risk factors and current status of depressive mood in mid-to-late adolescence and early adulthood in northern China

“…Although the sexual minority group likely only accounted for a small proportion of the overall group, it may have been an important factor affecting the emotional state of adolescents and early adults. Fourth, this study did not conduct a dimensional categorical analysis of the specific symptoms of depression and anxiety, considering the youthful attributes of the study population, and it did not conduct a systematic investigation and correlation analysis of cognitive function, even though other studies have shown that unipolar depression and bipolar depression in adolescence and early adulthood are associated with impaired executive functioning ( 32 ). Finally, depression and anxiety may be related to other factors that were not considered in this study, due to the characteristics of the study sample.…”

Neurocognitive risk phenotyping to predict mood symptoms in adolescence.

“…Such deficits have been observed at comparable effect sizes across subdimensions of executive functioning, suggesting mood-related impairment in “common” executive functioning that broadly disrupts goal-directed behavior (Snyder, 2013). In turn, common executive dysfunction is observed across mood disorders (Snyder et al, 2019), putatively driving shared psychopathological processes that correspond with distress, overlapping symptoms, or symptom severity (Peterson et al, 2022). Critically, poor executive functioning may be a risk marker for future mood pathology.…”