Anxiety and Depressive Symptom Trajectories in Adolescence and the Co-Occurring Development of Cognitive Biases: Evidenc
- PDF / 1,397,911 Bytes
- 17 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 103 Downloads / 204 Views
Anxiety and Depressive Symptom Trajectories in Adolescence and the Co-Occurring Development of Cognitive Biases: Evidence from the CogBIAS Longitudinal Study Annabel Songco 1
&
Charlotte Booth 1 & Olivia Spiegler 1 & Sam Parsons 1 & Elaine Fox 1
# The Author(s) 2020
Abstract The development of negative cognitive biases, together with symptoms of anxiety and depression, has yet to be investigated longitudinally. Using a three-wave design, the present study examined developmental trajectories of anxiety and depressive symptoms and the co-occurrence of cognitive biases, in a large normative sample of adolescents (N = 504). Data was drawn from the CogBIAS Longitudinal Study (CogBIAS-L-S), which assessed a wide range of psychological variables, including cognitive biases and self-reported anxiety and depressive symptoms, when adolescents were approximately 13, 14.5, and 16 years of age. The results showed that overall levels of anxiety were low and stable, while levels of depression were low but increased slightly at each wave. Growth mixture modeling identified four distinct developmental classes with regard to anxiety and depressive symptoms. Multiple group analysis further showed that class membership was related to the development of cognitive biases. The majority of the sample (75%) was characterised by ‘Low symptoms’ of anxiety and depression and showed low interpretation and memory biases for negative stimuli at each wave. A second class (11%) displayed ‘Decreasing anxiety symptoms’ and showed decreasing interpretation bias, but increasing memory bias. A third class (8%) displayed ‘Comorbid increasing symptoms’ and showed increasing interpretation and memory biases. While the fourth class (6%) displayed ‘Comorbid decreasing symptoms’ and showed decreasing interpretation and memory biases. This longitudinal study sheds light on healthy and psychopathological emotional development in adolescence and highlights cognitive mechanisms that may be useful targets for prevention and early interventions. Keywords Cognitive Bias . Anxiety . Depression . Adolescence . Longitudinal . Growth mixture modeling (GMM)
Cognitive theories of anxiety and depression emphasise the importance of cognitive biases as key factors contributing to the onset and maintenance of emotional disorders (Beck et al. 1985; Clark et al. 1999). These biases selectively direct information-processing resources towards negative, relative to positive or benign information, resulting in distorted patterns of thinking. Early work suggested that selective attention towards threat-related stimuli was characteristic of anxiety, while memory biases favouring negative self-referent information were
Annabel Songco, Charlotte Booth and Olivia Spiegler are the joint first author * Annabel Songco [email protected] 1
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, New Radcliffe House, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Oxford OX26GG, UK
characteristic of depression (Mathews and MacLeod 1994). These cognitive biases, together with biased inte
Data Loading...
