A systematic review of the relationships amongst cognitive control and depressive symptoms in adolescence, and an empirical study of the relationships between motor control and cognitive control in childhood

Ferguson, Cameron 2022. A systematic review of the relationships amongst cognitive control and depressive symptoms in adolescence, and an empirical study of the relationships between motor control and cognitive control in childhood. ClinPsy Thesis, Cardiff University. Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

Struggling to control thinking can involve finding it hard to stop unhelpful lines of thought and being less able to resist distraction (i.e., cognitive inhibition), having trouble switching between different frames of mind (i.e., cognitive flexibility), and struggling to remember and use information during tasks (i.e., working memory). Difficulties with controlling thinking are linked with emotional and behavioural problems in childhood, including depression and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Depression is a particularly common emotional problem in adolescence, and it can lead to poor educational, occupational, and health outcomes across the lifespan. So far, studies have looked at how groups of adolescents with and without depression do on tasks that measure how well they control thinking. These studies have found some evidence that adolescents with a diagnosis of depression struggle with controlling thinking. However, adolescents do not fit neatly into “depressed” and “nondepressed” groups. Neither is controlling thinking (i.e., through cognitive inhibition, cognitive flexibility, and working memory) an all or nothing ability. Adolescents have varying levels of depressive symptoms and skills to control thinking. However, it is unknown how varying levels of depressive symptoms and skills to control thinking relate to each other. In Paper 1, a systematic literature review including four meta-analyses was conducted. 19 individual studies, involving over 3700 children, which looked at relationships between depressive symptoms and controlling thinking were reviewed to work out which aspects of controlling thinking are linked with depressive symptoms. The results suggested that the ability to resist distraction, and working memory, or the ability to keep and manipulate information held in the mind’s eye are linked with depressive symptoms. Therefore, therapies which improve adolescents’ skills to resist distraction and keep and manipulate information held in mind might be helpful additions to existing evidence-based therapies for depression. Although, these findings are limited by the typically poor quality of the source studies and a lack of consideration of relevant covariates, such as levels of anxiety symptoms. ADHD is a relatively common neurodevelopmental problem in childhood which is associated with poor cognitive, educational, and occupational outcomes. Children with ADHD experience difficulties with controlling thinking and controlling movement. Children learn to control movement before they learn to control thinking, leading some researchers to suggest that difficulties with controlling movement may result in difficulties with controlling thought in ADHD. However, the relationship between controlling movement and controlling thought is poorly understood. One reason for this is that controlling movement, like controlling thought, involves several specific skills. Specific movement control skills include being able to choose to generate movements (i.e., motor generation), being able to adjust movements in response to unchanging visual stimuli (i.e., visuomotor fluency), and being able to control movement in changeable visual situations, for example when an object to be followed moves in an unpredictable way (i.e., visuomotor flexibility). Also, skills for controlling thinking involve several more basic skills which act as building blocks (e.g., information processing efficiency, a speed-accuracy trade-off, and the time necessary for stimuli encoding and motor response preparation). In Paper 2, to work out which specific movement skills (i.e., motor generation, visuomotor fluency, and visuomotor flexibility) are linked with skills for controlling thinking (i.e., cognitive inhibition, working memory, and cognitive flexibility) in childhood, 255 children aged 4 to 10 were assessed with a range of movement and thinking tasks. Cognitive modelling was also used to break down the thinking skill of resisting distraction (cognitive inhibition) into its basic building blocks, including how long it takes children to process information (i.e., “drift rate”), whether they prioritise doing the task quickly or doing the task accurately (i.e., “boundary separation”), and the time taken to encode stimuli and prepare motor responses (i.e., “nondecision time”). Carers were interviewed to measure the levels of hyperactive-impulsive ADHD symptoms displayed by the children. The results showed that being able to control movement in response to unchanging visual stimuli (visuomotor fluency) is linked with skills in resisting distraction (cognitive inhibition) and being able to control movement in changeable visual situations (visuomotor flexibility) is linked with skills in switching between different frames of mind (cognitive flexibility). These results were the same regardless of whether children showed high or low levels of hyperactive-impulsive ADHD symptoms. Together, these findings suggest that therapies which improve skills in controlling movement in response to visual changes might reduce distractibility and enhance the skill to switch between different frames of mind in young children, regardless of whether they show high or low levels of hyperactivity. Unfortunately, these findings are cross sectional which means they cannot demonstrate causality. Further research is needed to determine whether visuomotor fluency and visuomotor flexibility causally influence cognitive inhibition and cognitive flexibility, respectively.

Item Type:	Thesis (DClinPsy)
Date Type:	Completion
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Psychology
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	14 September 2022
Last Modified:	05 Jan 2024 08:26
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/152609

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