Cumulative lifetime acute stressor exposure interacts with reward responsiveness to predict longitudinal increases in depression severity in adolescence

Abstract

Background: Life stress and blunted reward processing each have been associated with the onset and maintenance of major depressive disorder. However, much of this work has been cross-sectional, conducted in separate lines of inquiry, and focused on recent life stressor exposure, despite the fact that theories of depression posit that stressors can have cumulative effects over the lifespan. To address these limitations, we investigated whether acute and chronic stressors occurring over the lifespan interacted with blunted reward processing to predict increases in depression over time in healthy youth.

Method: Participants were 245 adolescent girls aged 8-14 years old (M_age = 12.4, s.d. = 1.8) who were evaluated at baseline and two years later. The reward positivity (RewP), an event-related potential measure of reward responsiveness, was assessed at baseline using the doors task. Cumulative lifetime exposure to acute and chronic stressors was assessed two years later using the Stress and Adversity Inventory for Adolescents (Adolescent STRAIN). Finally, depressive symptoms were assessed at both baseline and follow-up using the Children's Depression Inventory.

Results: As hypothesized, greater lifetime acute stressor exposure predicted increases in depressive symptoms over two years, but only for youth exhibiting a blunted RewP. This interaction, however, was not found for chronic stressors.

Conclusions: Lifetime acute stressor exposure may be particularly depressogenic for youth exhibiting a blunted RewP. Conversely, a robust RewP may be protective in the presence of greater acute lifetime stressor exposure.

Keywords: Adolescent; Developmental Psychopathology; Life Stress; Major Depressive Disorder; RewP; Reward.

Fig. 1.

The event-related potential (ERP) to wins (red) and losses (black) as well as the difference waveform (RewP) at electrode FCz (top graph) and the scalp topography (bottom graph) (N = 245).

Fig. 2.

Conditional effect of lifetime acute stressor exposure (STRAIN) on follow-up depressive severity (CDI). Johnson-Neyman plot of the Lifetime Acute Stressor Exposure × Reward Positivity interaction predicting depressive symptom scores on the Children's Depression Inventory at follow up. The dotted line indicates the value of the RewP where the confidence intervals cross zero. Lifetime Acute Stressor Exposure predicted depressive symptom scores at follow up at amplitudes of RewP below the dotted line. The shaded area represents the confidence interval of the conditional effect, with the dark gray area representing values of Baseline RewP for which the effect is significant, and the light gray area representing values of Baseline RewP for which the effect is non-significant. Baseline RewP, Age, CDI scores and Lifetime Chronic Stressor Exposure were included as covariates (N = 245).