Working memory capacity and spontaneous emotion regulation in generalised anxiety disorder

ABSTRACT

Researchers have postulated that deficits in cognitive control are associated with, and thus may underlie, the perseverative thinking that characterises generalised anxiety disorder (GAD). We examined associations between cognitive control and levels of spontaneous state rumination following a stressor in a sample of healthy control participants (CTL; n = 27) and participants with GAD (n = 21). We assessed cognitive control by measuring working memory capacity (WMC), defined as the ability to maintain task-relevant information by ignoring task-irrelevant information. To this end, we used an affective version of the reading span task with valenced (negative or neutral) distractors. Lower WMC in the presence of negative distractors was associated with greater state rumination in the GAD group, but not in the CTL group. These findings suggest that difficulty maintaining task-relevant information due to interference from negative distractors contributes to perseverative thinking in GAD.

KEYWORDS:

• Generalised anxiety disorder
• working memory
• cognitive control
• rumination
• stress

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The two groups’ state anxiety levels differed at baseline, which might account for the findings reported here. Thus, we also controlled for levels of anxiety at baseline when predicting state rumination, and we obtained the same pattern of results. Block 1 was significant, F (4, 41) = 13.08, p < .001, R² = .56, 95%CI [.39–.73], and the group × RSpan-Negative interaction term significantly improved the prediction of state rumination, ΔR² = .09, ΔF(1, 40)  = 10.27, p = .003. Furthermore, the association between RSpan-Negative scores and state rumination remained significant in the GAD group, t(15) = –2.41, β = –.40, p = .029, but not in the CTL group, t(23) = .51, β = .09, p = .61.

2. Removing outliers did not change the findings, and, thus, we report findings based on the analyses including outliers.

Additional information

Funding

This work was partly supported by a Research Seed Grant of the UMaine Rising Tide/NSF ADVANCE Award to KLY.