Relationship Between Mood Disorders and Working Memory
Mentor 1
Salahadin Lotfi
Mentor 2
Hanjoo Lee
Location
Union Wisconsin Room
Start Date
5-4-2019 1:30 PM
End Date
5-4-2019 3:30 PM
Description
Relationship Between Mood Disorders and Working Memory
Caed Budris, Madeline Ann Rech, Salahadin Lotfi, Hanjoo Lee
Mood Disorders such as anxiety and depression have been demonstrated to greatly impair cognitive function. A significant deficit in Working Memory capacity (WMC), as a fundamental component of cognitive functioning, has been linked to mood disorders. As part of a bigger study, this experiment examined the relationship between Mood Diagnoses and WMC (N= 57) through self-report questionnaires (DASS21 and Rumination Response Scale) and a Visual Working Memory task (VWM). In this task (Neutral version), trials are presented with two stimulus arrays: a memory array and a test array. Oriented colored rectangles as memory arrays are randomly presented across a short retention period. Participants attempt to remember the locations of arrays and recall the orientations by responding if there is a change or not. While a significant negative correlation was found between VWM and Mood Diagnosis, r(57) = -.28, p < .035, there was a significant positive correlation between VWM and Rumination, r(57) = .283, p < .033. Consistent with previous studies, our result confirms the link between cognitive impairments and mood disorders. The relationship between Rumination and WMC disagrees with current research that has shown cognitive impairments in people with excessive ruminations. A possible explanation for this comes from research that shows rumination largely comes from the inability to switch between information of emotional value and information of un-emotional value. Our VWM task was not sensitive to capture emotional information and didn’t require task switching. However, the emergent positive correlation between rumination and WMC may indicate individuals with larger WMC tend to use available WM resources to ruminate, resulting in excessive emotional distress. Futures studies could be designed with sensitive components to emotional value to further shed light on the association between rumination and WMC.
Relationship Between Mood Disorders and Working Memory
Union Wisconsin Room
Relationship Between Mood Disorders and Working Memory
Caed Budris, Madeline Ann Rech, Salahadin Lotfi, Hanjoo Lee
Mood Disorders such as anxiety and depression have been demonstrated to greatly impair cognitive function. A significant deficit in Working Memory capacity (WMC), as a fundamental component of cognitive functioning, has been linked to mood disorders. As part of a bigger study, this experiment examined the relationship between Mood Diagnoses and WMC (N= 57) through self-report questionnaires (DASS21 and Rumination Response Scale) and a Visual Working Memory task (VWM). In this task (Neutral version), trials are presented with two stimulus arrays: a memory array and a test array. Oriented colored rectangles as memory arrays are randomly presented across a short retention period. Participants attempt to remember the locations of arrays and recall the orientations by responding if there is a change or not. While a significant negative correlation was found between VWM and Mood Diagnosis, r(57) = -.28, p < .035, there was a significant positive correlation between VWM and Rumination, r(57) = .283, p < .033. Consistent with previous studies, our result confirms the link between cognitive impairments and mood disorders. The relationship between Rumination and WMC disagrees with current research that has shown cognitive impairments in people with excessive ruminations. A possible explanation for this comes from research that shows rumination largely comes from the inability to switch between information of emotional value and information of un-emotional value. Our VWM task was not sensitive to capture emotional information and didn’t require task switching. However, the emergent positive correlation between rumination and WMC may indicate individuals with larger WMC tend to use available WM resources to ruminate, resulting in excessive emotional distress. Futures studies could be designed with sensitive components to emotional value to further shed light on the association between rumination and WMC.
