Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, United States.
J Affect Disord. 2018 Aug 1;235:499-505. doi: 10.1016/j.jad.2018.04.064. Epub 2018 Apr 13.
Temperamental effortful control and attentional networks are increasingly viewed as important underlying processes in depression and anxiety. However, it is still unknown whether these factors facilitate depressive and anxiety symptoms in the general population and, more specifically, in remitted depressed individuals.
We investigated to what extent effortful control and attentional networks (i.e., Attention Network Task) explain concurrent depressive and anxious symptoms in healthy individuals (n = 270) and remitted depressed individuals (n = 90). Both samples were highly representative of the US population.
Increased effortful control predicted a substantial decrease in symptoms of both depression and anxiety in the whole sample, whereas decreased efficiency of executive attention predicted a modest increase in depressive symptoms. Remitted depressed individuals did not show less effortful control nor less efficient attentional networks than healthy individuals. Moreover, clinical status did not moderate the relationship between temperamental factors and either depressive or anxiety symptoms.
Limitations include the cross-sectional nature of the study.
Our study shows that temperamental effortful control represents an important transdiagnostic process for depressive and anxiety symptoms in adults.
气质性努力控制和注意网络越来越被视为抑郁和焦虑的重要潜在过程。然而，目前尚不清楚这些因素是否会在普通人群中促进抑郁和焦虑症状，更具体地说，是否会促进缓解后的抑郁人群的抑郁和焦虑症状。
我们调查了努力控制和注意网络（即注意网络任务）在健康个体（n=270）和缓解后的抑郁个体（n=90）中，对同时存在的抑郁和焦虑症状的解释程度。这两个样本都非常具有代表性。
努力控制的增加预测了整个样本中抑郁和焦虑症状的显著下降，而执行注意力效率的降低则预示着抑郁症状的适度增加。缓解后的抑郁个体表现出的气质性努力控制和注意力网络效率并不比健康个体差。此外，临床状态并没有调节气质因素与抑郁或焦虑症状之间的关系。
研究的局限性包括横断面研究的性质。
我们的研究表明，气质性努力控制是成年人抑郁和焦虑症状的一个重要的跨诊断过程。
