The role of cognitive control in the co-occurrence of disordered eating and internalizing symptoms in preadolescence.

Thomas, Kai ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7584-2881 2022. The role of cognitive control in the co-occurrence of disordered eating and internalizing symptoms in preadolescence. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University. Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

This thesis aimed to investigate the associations between cognitive control, disordered eating (DE), and internalizing symptoms in a typically developing sample of preadolescents. Chapter 1 presents a review of the core constructs and related literature surrounding what is currently known about the overlap between DE, internalizing disorders, and cognitive control. In Chapter 2, I investigated associations between self-reported DE and internalizing symptoms in in a demographically diverse sample of preadolescents, finding strong evidence for these associations in both boys and girls. In Chapter 3, I examined the role of set shifting, finding no behavioral evidence for an association between poorer set shifting and higher levels of DE and internalizing symptoms in preadolescents. Cognitive control processes were examined further in Chapter 4, in the form of response inhibition and response monitoring. During a Go/NoGo task, electroencephalography was used to measure event-related potentials. I found no behavioral evidence to suggest DE was associated with impairments in response inhibition or response monitoring performance in preadolescence. However, higher levels of depression were associated with greater response inhibition performance but impaired response monitoring performance. When examining neural markers, significant associations were found between some neural markers of response inhibition and increased levels of anxiety and depression. In Chapter 5, I built upon the work described in Chapter 4 by exploring these cognitive control processes in the context of emotion. As in Chapters 3 and 4, I found no associations between behavioral performance on the emotional Go/NoGo task and DE and internalizing symptoms. However, higher levels of DE were associated with poorer recognition of happy facial expressions and enhanced neural markers of response inhibition during the presentation of happy faces in the emotional Go/NoGo task. Lastly, blunted neural markers of response monitoring were associated with increased DE in the context of emotion only. In summary, findings from this thesis demonstrate neural indicators of cognitive control impairments are associated with the early emergence of DE and internalizing symptoms in preadolescence. Implications for early intervention and future research are discussed in Chapter 6.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Date Type:	Completion
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Psychology
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	27 February 2023
Last Modified:	10 Feb 2024 02:48
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/157314

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