Affective working memory in depression

Abstract

Depressed individuals show a wide range of difficulties in executive functioning (including working memory), which can be a significant burden on everyday mental processes. Theoretical models of depression have proposed these difficulties to be especially pronounced in affective contexts. However, evidence investigating affective working memory (WM) capacity in depressed individuals has shown mixed results. The preregistered study used a complex span task, which has been shown to be sensitive to difficulties with WM capacity in affective relative to neutral contexts in other clinical groups, to explore affective WM capacity in clinical depression. Affective WM capacity was compared between individuals with current depression (n = 24), individuals in remission from depression (n = 25), and healthy controls (n = 30). The results showed that, overall, WM capacity was more impaired in the context of negative distractor images, relative to neutral images. Furthermore, those with a lifetime history of depression (individuals with current depression and individuals remitted from depression), performed worse on the task, compared to healthy controls. However, there was no support for the greater disruption of WM capacity in affective compared to neutral contexts in those with a lifetime history of depression. These findings' implications for current models of depression are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Figure 1. Proportion Recall Across Depressive States and Valence

Note. Panel A shows the proportions of words recalled correctly in the negative (purple/dark gray) and neutral (yellow/light gray) conditions of the Affective Picture Span Paradigm (Schweizer & Dalgleish, 2016), by never-depressed individuals (left) and those with a lifetime history of major depressive disorder (MDD) (right). Individual data points are represented as well as the median score, thick black line in boxplot. The thin black bars represent the standard deviation within each group and condition. Panel B illustrates words recalled correctly in the negative (purple/dark grey) and neutral (yellow/light grey) conditions, by never-depressed individuals (left), individuals remitted from MDD (middle) and currently depressed individuals (right). Depressive status was determined by the Semi-structured Clinical Interview for DSM–V Disorders (First et al., 2015). The task includes pictures from the International Affective Picture System IAPS database. See the online article for the color version of this figure.