The association between implicit and explicit affective inhibitory control, rumination and depressive symptoms

Abstract

Inhibitory control underlies one’s ability to maintain goal-directed behavior by inhibiting prepotent responses or ignoring irrelevant information. Recent models suggest that impaired inhibition of negative information may contribute to depressive symptoms, and that this association is mediated by rumination. However, the exact nature of this association, particularly in non-clinical samples, is unclear. The current study assessed the relationship between inhibitory control over emotional vs. non-emotional information, rumination and depressive symptoms. A non-clinical sample of 119 participants (mean age: 36.44 ± 11.74) with various levels of depressive symptoms completed three variations of a Go/No-Go task online; two of the task variations required either explicit or implicit processing of emotional expressions, and a third variation contained no emotional expressions (i.e., neutral condition). We found reductions in inhibitory control for participants reporting elevated symptoms of depression on all three task variations, relative to less depressed participants. However, for the task variation that required implicit emotion processing, depressive symptoms were associated with inhibitory deficits for sad and neutral, but not for happy expressions. An exploratory analysis showed that the relationship between inhibition and depressive symptoms occurs in part through trait rumination for all three tasks, regardless of emotional content. Collectively, these results indicate that elevated depressive symptoms are associated with both a general inhibitory control deficit, as well as affective interference from negative emotions, with implications for the assessment and treatment of mood disorders.

Exploring the relationship between emotion regulation, inhibitory control, and eating psychopathology in a non‐clinical sample

“…Differences between groups in food‐related inhibitory control did not remain significant after controlling for co‐occurring psychopathology (i.e., depression, anxiety and stress), which should be considered when interpreting the findings. In fact, previous studies have found evidence for an association between anxiety and depressive symptoms and poor executive functioning (Billingsley‐Marshall et al., 2013; Shimony et al., 2021). Future studies should take into account the presence of comorbid symptomatology as possible variables influencing cognitive performance.…”

Associations between disordered eating, internalizing symptoms, and behavioral and neural correlates of response inhibition in preadolescence

“…This association may have clinical utility in identifying and predicting depressive symptoms in preadolescence. For example, response inhibition difficulties may be used as an objective tool for assessing depressive symptoms alongside self‐report measures, with the potential to predict the onset of depressive symptoms (Shimony et al., 2021). Furthermore, support aimed at training effective response inhibition ability in preadolescence, such as using cognitive training programs (Koster et al., 2017; Woolf et al., 2022), may help prevent or lower depressive symptoms.…”

Early Emergence of Rumination has no Association with Performance on a Non-affective Inhibitory Control Task

“…Poor inhibitory control (IC) is a hypothesized vulnerability for both depression and ruminative thinking, though the effect of rumination on IC and depression may be indirect [ 17 , 18 ]. IC is one of various higher-level cognitive processes, grouped under the term cognitive control, which regulate lower-level cognitive processes, such as motor control [ 17 ].…”