Mental Health Science (Sep 2024)

Change blindness, reward bias, negative affective priming: Exploring individual‐level associations between depression/anxiety symptoms and cognition

  • Annamaria Balogh,
  • Glyn Lewis,
  • Roz Shafran,
  • Oliver J. Robinson

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1002/mhs2.70
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 2, no. 3
pp. n/a – n/a

Abstract

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Abstract Cognitive biases are thought to contribute to depression/anxiety. In addition to self‐reported measures, cognitive tasks could potentially be integrated with clinical practice as more precise measures of cognitive biases. In a large online study we explored the individual‐level association between depression/anxiety symptoms and performance on (1) reward bias, (2) negative affective priming, and (3) change blindness tasks. Participants completed tasks alongside depression/anxiety symptom questionnaires. We used regression analyses to test for associations between task performance and questionnaire scores. We conducted a replication study of the change blindness task, and performed a mega‐analysis of the two studies. Faster reaction time in the change blindness task was associated with higher depression score (B = −27, p = 0.034) in the first study (N = 545) and higher depression and anxiety scores (depression: B = −15, p = 0.045; anxiety: B = −17, p = 0.022) in the replication study (N = 616). These effects were significant in the mega‐analysis but did not withstand adjusting for age in either the original and replication studies or the mega‐analysis. We found no association between depression/anxiety and reward bias (N = 504) and negative affective priming (N = 539). Our results provide preliminary evidence that individuals with more severe depressive/anxious symptoms may be faster at identifying changes in the change blindness task. Contrary to previous findings, neither reward bias nor negative affective priming was associated with depression/anxiety.

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