Effects of Subclinical Depression and Aging on Generative Reasoning About Linear Orders: Same or Different Processing Limitations?

Abstract

The performance of older adults and depressed people on linear order reasoning is hypothesized to be best explained by different theoretical models. Whereas depressed younger adults are found to be impaired in generative inference making, older adults are well capable of making such inferences but exhibit problems with working memory (Experiments 1 and 2). Restriction of the available study time impairs reasoning by nondepressed control participants and. as such, proves to be a good model of older adults' but not depressed participants' limitations (Experiment 3). These results are replicated comparing depressed and older participants with a control group in the same study, providing increased power and linking the results to additional control measures of processing speed and working memory (Experiment 4).

Repetitive thought as a moderator of the impact of control deprivation on emotional and cognitive functioning

“…The difficulty level was operationalized by different ways of presenting pairs during the learning stage. As illustrated in Figure 1, for difficult orders the numbers of operations that participants need to carry out to rearrange the presented pairs into mental array is higher than for easy orders (Sędek & von Hecker, 2004). More specifically, for easy orders elements are presented in such way that a mental array can be constructed by simple adding one pair to another.…”

“…Depending on the experimental condition, participants were exposed to 1) control deprivation (unsolvable tasks) followed by repetitive thought, 2) control deprivation followed by distraction (focusing on emotionally neutral issues that are unrelated to the tasks in the control deprivation phase), 3) cognitive control (solvable tasks) followed by repetitive thought, or 4) cognitive control followed by distraction. Subsequently, the participants were given a task involving the construction of linear orders which required memory retrieval and generation of mental models (Sędek & von Hecker, 2004). At the end, they assessed on self-rating scales the cognitive difficulties and emotional states they experienced during the linear orders construction task.…”

“…To answer these questions in was necessary to go beyond the information presented during the learning stage. More precisely, participants needed to integrate pairwise information into a comprehensive mental model, and then infer the correct answer (Sędek & von Hecker, 2004). Consequently, the percentage of correct answers to inferred questions can be treated as an indicator of generative reasoning function.…”

“…Linear Orders is a cognitive task that requires memory retrieval and generative reasoning (Sędek & von Hecker, 2004;von Hecker, Sędek, Piber-Dąbrowska & Bedyńska, 2006). The task consisted of 6 series of the same structure.…”

The association between the negative effects attributed to ecstasy use and measures of cognition and mood among users.

“…Aside from the evidence that psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia are associated with specific forms of cognitive impairment, it has also been documented that sub-clinical levels of depression and anxiety are associated with cognitive impairment (e.g. Ramponi, Barnard, & Nimmo-Smith, 2004;Sedek & von Hecker 2004). It may be that ecstasy-related deficits in cognition and affect are concentrated among those who self-report adverse effects of using the drug.…”