Executive Functioning in Children and Adolescents with Major Depressive Disorder

Abstract

The present investigation examined neurocognitive functioning, focusing on executive functioning (EF), in 39 children and adolescents with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and 24 healthy control subjects all ages 8 to 17 years. The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Third Edition along with several measures of executive functioning including the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task, Trail Making Test, Controlled Oral Word Association Test, and the Stroop Color Word Test were administered. The neurocognitive profiles for the group of depressed children and adolescents were grossly intact as most scores on intellectual and EF measures fell within the average range and did not differ from the comparison group. Mental processing speed was decreased in the MDD versus normal control group and 27% of the depressed group performed below average on the Trail Making Test. This investigation provided a good base from which to compare future literature on EF in outpatients with early-onset MDD.

The Impact of Sexual Assault History on Perceived Consequences of Risky Dating Scenarios

“…For instance, the speed at which women with and without a SAH respond (i.e., how long they stay in the scene) is a primary difference reported in the literature. However, no studies to-date have controlled for depressive symptoms, which are common in sexual assault survivors [22,23] and are related to psychomotor slowing [24] and slower processing speed [25]. Similarly, a recent study utilized a written vignette and replicated the finding that women with a SAH left later in the scene [26].…”

Executive function and attention in children and adolescents with depressive disorders: a systematic review

“…Klimkeit et al [46] noted this deficit only in the dysthymic/depressive disorder not otherwise specified group but not the major depressed group. Investigating only the phonemic component, two other studies did not observe group differences [23,39].…”

“…This study had a high rate of comorbidity with anxiety, which means that impaired performance on the TMT B may have been due to the presence of anxiety rather than depression. Favre et al [23] found no significant group differences but noted greater variance in the performance of a larger group of children and adolescents with MDD. They also found no group difference on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST).…”

“…Many of the tasks used to measure response inhibition require other cognitive resources such as working memory (keeping rules in mind) and activating an alternative response. Five studies were identified that have used the Stroop to assess inhibitory control in paediatric depressive disorders [13,15,19,23,64]. While three of these five studies used the standard colour-word Stroop, NeshatDoost et al [19] and Dalgleish et al [64] employed a modified version with positive, neutral, depression-related, threat-related, and trauma-related words.…”

The typical developmental trajectory of social and executive functions in late adolescence and early adulthood.

“…We developed a demography measure assessing education, employment, change to living arrangements and friendship groups over the preceding year to account for any effects of environment on functional change. Participants were asked to report current mental illness and mood state because this may have affected task performance, although current findings are equivocal in relation to mood state and cognitive function (Uekermann et al, 2008;Favre et al, 2009). …”