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The Role of Executive Functioning in Adolescent Rumination and Depression

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Abstract

Research has underscored the importance of adolescence in the development of depression and its associated key risk factors, namely rumination. Recently, there has been an emphasis on exploring the neuropsychological correlates of depression and rumination, including the role of executive functioning (EF). However, research has yet to fully elucidate the relationship among these constructs from a developmental perspective. The purpose of the current study was to examine the relationship between various components of EF, rumination, and depression among a normative sample of adolescents. A secondary aim of this study was to examine whether rumination mediates the relationship between EF and depression. Multiple regression analyses indicated a significant association between perseveration, set-shifting and inhibitory impairments and increased depressive symptomatology. Set-shifting deficits were also associated with higher levels of rumination. Additionally, rumination significantly mediated the relationship between impaired set-shifting and depressive symptoms. These findings add to the limited extant literature examining the associations among these constructs in a non-clinical sample of adolescents. Further, this study is the first to examine the mediating effects of rumination in youth.

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Notes

  1. Given the identified impact of medication and history of TBI on cognitive performance, we evaluated whether history of cognitive evaluations, TBI, medical conditions, and current medication status were significantly associated with any of the study variables. None of these variables were significantly related to any of the study variables (p’s > .5).

  2. The study procedures necessitated the administration of the self-report questionnaires and assessments at two time points. Specifically, the site of data collection (local high school) placed restrictions on the specific lengths and dates of the sessions in which we could conduct data collection. As such, data collection was done over the course of two separate periods.

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Acknowledgments

This study was funded by Kent State University as part of an award through the Department of Psychological Sciences.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego, CA, USA

    Kelsey S. Dickson

  2. Child and Adolescent Services Research Center, San Diego, CA, USA

    Kelsey S. Dickson

  3. Kent State University, Kent, OH, USA

    Jeffrey A. Ciesla & Kate Zelic

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  1. Kelsey S. Dickson
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Correspondence to Kelsey S. Dickson.

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Kelsey S. Dickson, Jeffrey A. Ciesla and Kate Zelic declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

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All procedures performed involving human subjects were in accordance with ethical standards of the institutional review committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments.

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All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (national and institutional). Informed consent was obtained from all from participants 18 years old or older; parental consent and adolescent assent for all individual participants under the age of 18.

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Dickson, K.S., Ciesla, J.A. & Zelic, K. The Role of Executive Functioning in Adolescent Rumination and Depression. Cogn Ther Res 41, 62–72 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-016-9802-0

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