Regaining control of your emotions? Investigating the mechanisms underlying effects of cognitive control training for remitted depressed patients.

Abstract

Studies suggest that cognitive control training shows potential as a preventive intervention for depression. At the same time, little is known regarding the mechanisms underlying effects of cognitive control training. Informed by theoretical frameworks of cognitive risk for recurrent depression (De Raedt & Koster, 2010;Siegle et al., 2007), the current study sought to model direct effects of cognitive control training on the complex interplay between affect, emotion regulation, residual symptomatology, and resilience in a sample of remitted depressed patients (n=92).Combining a four week experience sampling procedure with an experimental manipulation of cognitive control, we observed beneficial effects of cognitive control training on deployment of rumination. In addition, we obtained evidence for the causal involvement of cognitive control in efficacy of emotion regulation. In contrast to our expectations, cognitive control training did not exert immediate effects on residual symptomatology or resilience when compared to an active control condition, nor did cognitive control training impact the complex interplay between these variables. Overall, immediate effects of cognitive control training on functioning in daily life were limited.

Emotions under control? Better cognitive control predicts reduced negative emotionality but increased negative emotional reactivity within individuals

“…Moreover, other studies suggest that cognitive control training might positively impact adaptive emotion regulation, whereas its overall efficiency is limited in daily life functioning (Hoorelbeke et al, 2016(Hoorelbeke et al, , 2023. In contrast, other studies firmly support the benefits of cognitive control training in adaptive emotion regulation (Hendricks & Buchanan, 2016;Joormann & Quinn, 2014;Schweizer et al, 2013;Xiu et al, 2018) as well as in reducing vulnerability to anxiety and depression (Beloe & Derakshan, 2020;Grol et al, 2018).…”

“…The direction of causality between emotional reactivity and cognitive control is an additional open issue (Inzlicht et al, 2015;Pe et al, 2015). Although we built on the assumption that cognitive control has a causal effect on emotion regulation (Hoorelbeke et al, 2016(Hoorelbeke et al, , 2023, still, one may argue that increased negative emotional reactivity could have causally increased working memory capacity (Martin & Kerns, 2011). However, based on meta-analyses and large-scale replication studies looking into the effect of acute stress and emotion induction on working memory, a negative causal effect would be more plausible, if any (Shields et al, 2016;Souza et al, 2021;Xie et al, 2022).…”

“…Furthermore, the weaker the baseline capacity for response inhibition was, the more rumination increased negative affect and the less reappraisal helped to reduce negative affectivity within individuals (Pe et al, 2013). It has also been suggested that improved working memory may have a causal effect on emotion regulation, since working memory training can improve reappraisal and decrease rumination in daily life (Hoorelbeke et al, 2016(Hoorelbeke et al, , 2023. In addition, several studies established the efficiency of cognitive control training in enhancing emotion regulation (Joormann & Quinn, 2014;Schweizer et al, 2013;Xiu et al, 2018).…”

“…Making predictions at the level of individuals is hindered by the scarcity of withinindividual studies and most previous studies did not examine within-individual fluctuation in cognitive control and affectivity simultaneously (see Hoorelbeke et al, 2023;Pe et al, 2013Pe et al, , 2015. This is problematic since inference based on cross-sectional designs may not generalize to individuals: performance on self-regulation tasks fluctuate within individuals (Enkavi et al, 2019), and within-person associations between affective functioning differ remarkably from one individual to another (Fisher et al, 2018).…”

Treatment response following adaptive PASAT training for depression vulnerability: A systematic review and meta-analysis

“…Furthermore, one study (Moshier et al, 2015) passed inclusion criteria, but insufficient data was available to accurately calculate effect sizes and was thus not included in our meta-analysis. Finally, Hoorelbeke, Van den Bergh, et al, 2022 Across all incorporated studies, around 72% of participants were female, with a mean age of 37.9 (SD = 12.7). The sample sizes which were used for the calculation of effect sizes ranged from n = 9 (Segrave et al, 2014) to n = 213 (Hoorelbeke, Vervaeke, et al, 2022), with a median of n = 49 (IQR = 50).…”