Identifying cognitive and emotional risk factors that contribute to the onset, maintenance, and recurrence of depression is crucial for developing interventions for treatment and prevention.
Poor executive function skills may be vulnerabilities for the development of depression through their effect on emotion regulation. The purpose of this study was to explore specific executive function skills that may be related to adaptive emotion regulation abilities, with the ultimate goal of identifying psychological mechanisms that confer risk for the development of depression. Children, ages 8 to 17, completed behavioral and self-report measures of executive function assessing attentional control and inhibitory control, and self-report measures of emotion regulation and depressive symptoms. Results showed that better self-reported attentional control was associated with lower depressive symptoms and better emotion regulation. Better behavioral and self-reported inhibitory control were associated with lower depressive symptoms and with better emotion regulation. Additionally, better emotion regulation was associated with lower levels of depressive symptoms controlling for behavioral and self-reported measures of executive function. No evidence was found for statistical mediation by emotion regulation of the relation between executive function and depressive symptoms, however. The study demonstrated significant relations among executive function, emotion regulation, and depressive symptoms. Future studies are needed to clarify the direction of these associations, so that interventions can be developed that target specific executive functions and emotion regulation skills for the purpose of reducing the likelihood of depression.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-04142015-200208 |
| Date | 26 May 2015 |
| Creators | Samanez Larkin, Silvia Patricia |
| Contributors | Kirsten Haman, David Cole, Bruce Compas, Judy Garber |
| Publisher | VANDERBILT |
| Source Sets | Vanderbilt University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-04142015-200208/ |
| Rights | restricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to Vanderbilt University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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