Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-jr42d Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T23:39:27.543Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Higher cognitive ability buffers stress-related depressive symptoms in adolescent girls

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2015

Lucy Riglin ,
Stephan Collishaw ,
Katherine H. Shelton ,
I. C. McManus ,
Terry Ng-Knight ,
Ruth Sellers ,
Ajay K. Thapar ,
Norah Frederickson  and
Frances Rice
Lucy Riglin
Affiliation:
University College London
Stephan Collishaw
Affiliation:
Cardiff University and MRC Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics
Katherine H. Shelton
Affiliation:
Cardiff University
I. C. McManus
Affiliation:
University College London
Terry Ng-Knight
Affiliation:
University College London
Ruth Sellers
Affiliation:
Cardiff University and MRC Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics
Ajay K. Thapar
Affiliation:
Cardiff University and MRC Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics
Norah Frederickson
Affiliation:
University College London
Frances Rice*
Affiliation:
University College London
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Frances Rice, Department of Clinical Educational and Health Psychology, Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London, 26 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AP, UK; E-mail: f.rice@ucl.ac.uk.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Stress has been shown to have a causal effect on risk for depression. We investigated the role of cognitive ability as a moderator of the effect of stressful life events on depressive symptoms and whether this varied by gender. Data were analyzed in two adolescent data sets: one representative community sample aged 11–12 years (n = 460) and one at increased familial risk of depression aged 9–17 years (n = 335). In both data sets, a three-way interaction was found whereby for girls, but not boys, higher cognitive ability buffered the association between stress and greater depressive symptoms. The interaction was replicated when the outcome was a diagnosis of major depressive disorder. This buffering effect in girls was not attributable to coping efficacy. However, a small proportion of the variance was accounted for by sensitivity to environmental stressors. Results suggest that this moderating effect of cognitive ability in girls is largely attributable to greater available resources for cognitive operations that offer protection against stress-induced reductions in cognitive processing and cognitive control which in turn reduces the likelihood of depressive symptomatology.

Type
Regular Articles
Information
Development and Psychopathology , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , February 2016 , pp. 97 - 109
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Angold, A., & Costello, E. J. (2000). The Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Assessment (CAPA). Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 39, 39–48.Google Scholar
Angold, A., Costello, E., Farmer, E. M., Burns, B. J., & Erkanli, A. (1999). Impaired but undiagnosed. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 38, 129–137.Google Scholar
Angold, A., Costello, E. J., Messer, S. C., & Pickles, A. (1995). Development of a short questionnaire for use in epidemiological studies of depression in children and adolescents. International Journal of Methods in Psychiatric Research, 5, 251–262.Google Scholar
Angold, A., Costello, E. J., & Worthman, C. M. (1998). Puberty and depression: The roles of age, pubertal status and pubertal timing. Psychological Medicine, 28, 51–61.Google Scholar
Angold, A., Erkanli, A., Silberg, J., Eaves, L., & Costello, E. J. (2002). Depression scale scores in 8-17-year-olds: Effects of age and gender. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 43, 1052–1063.Google Scholar
Aron, E. N., & Aron, A. (1997). Sensory-processing sensitivity and its relation to introversion and emotionality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73, 345–368.Google Scholar
Barnett, J. H., Salmond, C. H., Jones, P. B., & Sahakian, B. J. (2006). Cognitive reserve in neuropsychiatry. Psychological Medicine, 36, 1053–1064.Google Scholar
Barrett, L. F., Tugade, M. M., & Engle, R. W. (2004). Individual differences in working memory capacity and dual-process theories of the mind. Psychological Bulletin, 130, 553–573.Google Scholar
Boyce, W. T., & Ellis, B. J. (2005). Biological sensitivity to context: I. An evolutionary–developmental theory of the origins and functions of stress reactivity. Development and Psychopathology, 17, 271–301.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brewin, C. R., & Smart, L. (2005). Working memory capacity and suppression of intrusive thoughts. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 36, 61–68.Google Scholar
Cohen, J., Cohen, P., Stephen, G., & Leona, S. (2003). Applied multiple regression/correlation analysis for the behavioral sciences. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Cohen-Gilbert, J. E., & Thomas, K. M. (2013). Inhibitory control during emotional distraction across adolescence and early adulthood. Child Development, 84, 1954–1966.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Collishaw, S., Maughan, B., & Pickles, A. (2004). Affective problems in adults with mild learning disability: The roles of social disadvantage and ill health. British Journal of Psychiatry, 185, 350–351.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Costello, E. J., Erkanli, A., & Angold, A. (2006). Is there an epidemic of child or adolescent depression? Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 47, 1263–1271.Google Scholar
Dawson, J. F., & Richter, A. W. (2006). Probing three-way interactions in moderated multiple regression: Development and application of a slope difference test. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91, 917–926.Google Scholar
Deary, I. J., Whalley, L. J., Lemmon, H., Crawford, J. R., & Starr, J. M. (2000). The stability of individual differences in mental ability from childhood to old age: Follow-up of the 1932 Scottish mental survey. Intelligence, 28, 49–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellis, H. C. (1990). Depressive deficits in memory: Processing initiative and resource-allocation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 119, 60–62.Google Scholar
Feder, A., Nestler, E. J., & Charney, D. S. (2009). Psychobiology and molecular genetics of resilience. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10, 446–457.Google Scholar
Flegr, J., Hampl, R., Cernochova, D., Preiss, M., Bicikova, M., Sieger, L., et al. (2012). The relation of cortisol and sex hormone levels to results of psychological, performance, IQ and memory tests in military men and women. Neuroendocrinology Letters, 33, 224–235.Google Scholar
Franz, C. E., Lyons, M. J., O'Brien, R., Panizzon, M. S., Kim, K., Bhat, R., et al. (2011). A 35-Year longitudinal assessment of cognition and midlife depression symptoms: The Vietnam Era Twin Study of Aging. American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 19, 559–570.Google Scholar
Glaser, B., Gunnell, D., Timpson, N. J., Joinson, C., Zammit, S., Smith, G. D., et al. (2011). Age- and puberty-dependent association between IQ score in early childhood and depressive symptoms in adolescence. Psychological Medicine, 41, 333–343.Google Scholar
Goodman, S. H., & Gotlib, I. H. (1999). Risk for psychopathology in the children of depressed mothers: A developmental model for understanding mechanisms of transmission. Psychological Review, 106, 458–490.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goodyer, I. M. (2008). Emanuel Miller Lecture: Early onset depressions-meanings, mechanisms and processes. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 49, 1239–1256.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, H. (2005). Mental health of children and young people in Great Britain, 2004. London: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Hammen, C. (1991). Generation of stress in the course of unipolar depression. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 100, 555–561.Google Scholar
Hammen, C. (2005). Stress and depression. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 1, 293–319.Google Scholar
Hankin, B. L., & Abramson, L. Y. (2001). Development of gender differences in depression: An elaborated cognitive vulnerability–transactional stress theory. Psychological Bulletin, 127, 773–796.Google Scholar
Hartlage, S., Alloy, L. B., Vazquez, C., & Dykman, B. (1993). Automatic and effortful processing in depression. Psychological Bulletin, 113, 247–278.Google Scholar
Hatch, S. L., Jones, P. B., Kuh, D., Hardy, R., Wadsworth, M. E., & Richards, M. (2007). Childhood cognitive ability and adult mental health in the British 1946 birth cohort. Social Science & Medicine, 64, 2285–2296.Google Scholar
Hayes, A. F. (2013). Introduction to mediation, moderation, and conditional process analysis. New York: Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Johnson, J. H., & McCutcheon, S. M. (1980). Assessing life stress in older children and adolescents: Preliminary findings with the Life Events Checklist. Stress and Anxiety, 7, 111–125.Google Scholar
Joormann, J., & Gotlib, I. H. (2010). Emotion regulation in depression: Relation to cognitive inhibition. Cognition & Emotion, 24, 281–298.Google Scholar
Juster, R. P., Bizik, G., Picard, M., Arsenault-Lapierre, G., Sindi, S., Trepanier, L., et al. (2011). A transdisciplinary perspective of chronic stress in relation to psychopathology throughout life span development. Development and Psychopathology, 23, 725–776.Google Scholar
Kendler, K. S., & Baker, J. H. (2007). Genetic influences on measures of the environment: A systematic review. Psychological Medicine, 37, 615–626.Google Scholar
Kendler, K. S., & Gardner, C. O. (2010). Dependent stressful life events and prior depressive episodes in the prediction of major depression: The problem of causal inference in psychiatric epidemiology. Archives of General Psychiatry, 67, 1120.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kendler, K. S., Thornton, L. M., & Gardner, C. O. (2000). Stressful life events and previous episodes in the etiology of major depression in women: An evaluation of the “kindling” hypothesis. American Journal of Psychiatry, 157, 1243–1251.Google Scholar
Klein, K., & Boals, A. (2001). The relationship of life event stress and working memory capacity. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 15, 565–579.Google Scholar
Koenen, K. C., Moffitt, T. E., Roberts, A. L., Martin, L. T., Kubzansky, L., Harrington, H., et al. (2009). Childhood IQ and adult mental disorders: A test of the cognitive reserve hypothesis. American Journal of Psychiatry, 166, 50–57.Google Scholar
Liston, C., McEwen, B. S., & Casey, B. J. (2009). Psychosocial stress reversibly disrupts prefrontal processing and attentional control. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106, 912–917.Google Scholar
Lohman, D. F., Thorndike, R. L., Hagen, E. P., Smith, P., Fernandes, C., & Strand, S. (2001). Cognitive Abilities Test (3rd ed.). London: Nfer–Nelson.Google Scholar
Lupien, S. J., McEwen, B. S., Gunnar, M. R., & Heim, C. (2009). Effects of stress throughout the lifespan on the brain, behaviour and cognition. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10, 434–445.Google Scholar
Luthar, S. S. (1991). Vulnerability and resilience: A study of high-risk adolescents. Child Development, 62, 600–616.Google Scholar
Mars, B., Collishaw, S., Smith, D., Thapar, A., Potter, R., Sellers, R., et al. (2012). Offspring of parents with recurrent depression: Which features of parent depression index risk for offspring psychopathology? Journal of Affective Disorders, 136, 44–53.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Masten, A. S., Hubbard, J. J., Gest, S. D., Tellegen, A., Garmezy, N., & Ramirez, M. (1999). Competence in the context of adversity: Pathways to resilience and maladaptation from childhood to late adolescence. Development and Psychopathology, 11, 143–169.Google Scholar
McCormick, C. M., & Mathews, I. Z. (2007). HPA function in adolescence: Role of sex hormones in its regulation and the enduring consequences of exposure to stressors. Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior, 86, 220–233.Google Scholar
Monroe, S., & Harkness, K. (2005). Life stress, the “kindling” hypothesis, and the recurrence of depression: Considerations from a life stress perspective. Psychological Review, 112, 417–445.Google Scholar
National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. (2005). Depression in children and young people: Identification and management in primary, community and secondary care. London: Author.Google Scholar
Oldehinkel, A. J., & Bouma, E. M. C. (2011). Sensitivity to the depressogenic effect of stress and HPA-axis reactivity in adolescence: A review of gender differences. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 35, 1757–1770.Google Scholar
Pargas, R. C. M., Brennan, P. A., Hammen, C., & Le Brocque, R. (2010). Resilience to maternal depression in young adulthood. Developmental Psychology, 46, 805–814.Google Scholar
Pearlin, L. I., & Schooler, C. (1978). Structure of coping. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 19, 2–21.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Petersen, A. C., Crockett, L., & Richards, M. (1988). A self-report measure of pubertal status: Reliability, validity, and initial norms. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 17, 117–133.Google Scholar
Power, C., Li, L., & Hertzman, C. (2008). Cognitive development and cortisol patterns in mid-life: Findings from a British birth cohort. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 33, 530–539.Google Scholar
Rice, F., Harold, G. T., & Thapar, A. (2003). Negative life events as an account of age-related differences in the genetic aetiology of depression in childhood and adolescence. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 44, 977–987.Google Scholar
Schwarzer, R., & Jerusalem, M. (1995). Generalized Self-Efficacy Scale. In Weinman, J., Wright, S., & Johnston, M. (Eds.), Measures in health psychology: A user's portfolio. Causal and control beliefs (pp. 35–37). Windsor: Nfer-Nelson.Google Scholar
Slattery, M. J., Grieve, A. J., Ames, M. E., Armstrong, J. M., & Essex, M. J. (2013). Neurocognitive function and state cognitive stress appraisal predict cortisol reactivity to an acute psychosocial stressor in adolescents. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 38, 1318–1327.Google Scholar
Southwick, S. M., Vythilingam, M., & Charney, D. S. (2005). The psychobiology of depression and resilience to stress: Implications for prevention and treatment. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 1, 255–291.Google Scholar
Stawski, R. S., Almeida, D. M., Lachman, M. E., Tun, P. A., Rosnick, C. B., & Seeman, T. (2011). Associations between cognitive function and naturally occurring daily cortisol during middle adulthood: Timing is everything. Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 66, 71–81.Google Scholar
Strand, S. (2006). Comparing the predictive validity of reasoning tests and national end of Key Stage 2 tests: Which tests are the “best”? British Educational Research Journal, 32, 209–225.Google Scholar
Stroud, L. R., Salovey, P., & Epel, E. S. (2002). Sex differences in stress responses: Social rejection versus achievement stress. Biological Psychiatry, 52, 318–327.Google Scholar
Thapar, A., Collishaw, S., Pine, D. S., & Thapar, A. K. (2012). Depression in adolescence. Lancet, 379, 1056–1067.Google Scholar
Tiet, Q. Q., Bird, H. R., Davies, M., Hoven, C., Cohen, P., Jensen, P. S., et al. (1998). Adverse life events and resilience. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 37, 1191–1200.Google Scholar
Wechsler, D. (2003). Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children—Fourth edition (WISC-IV). San Antonio, TX: Psychological Corporation.Google Scholar
Weissman, M. M., Wolk, S., Goldstein, R. B., Moreau, D., Adams, P., Greenwald, S., et al. (1999). Depressed adolescents grown up. Journal of the American Medical Association, 281, 1707–1713.Google Scholar
Zigler, E., & Farber, E. A. (1985). Commonalities between the intellectual extremes: Giftedness and mental retardation. In Horowitz, F. D. & O'Brien, M. (Eds.), The gifted and talented: Developmental perspectives (pp. 387–408). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.Google Scholar