Internalising and externalising in early adolescence predict later executive function, not the other way around: a cross-lagged panel analysis

Abstract

Developmental changes in the brain networks involved in emotion regulation are thought to contribute to vulnerability to mental health problems during adolescence. Executive control is often viewed as allowing top-down regulation of emotional responses. However, while associations between executive control and mental health are commonly observed in both clinical and non-clinical populations, the direction of these associations remains unclear. Low, or immature, cognitive control could limit emotion regulation. Reversely, high emotionality could impede cognitive functioning. The scarcity of longitudinal studies testing for bi-directional effects, particularly in adolescence, has made it difficult to draw conclusions. This study analysed data from 1,445 participants of a longitudinal cohort in a cross-lagged panel design to understand bi-directional longitudinal associations between executive function and emotional behaviours across adolescence. Executive function was assessed using experimental working memory and inhibitory control tasks, emotional behaviours through parental report of internalising and externalising behaviours. Cross-sectional associations were replicated. Controlling for cross-sectional associations, early executive functions were not found to predict later emotional behaviours. Instead, early emotional behaviours predicted later executive function, with the strongest link observed between early externalising and later working memory. These results suggest that emotional well-being may affect the maturation of executive function during adolescence.

Inconsistencies between Subjective Reports of Cognitive Difficulties and Performance on Cognitive Tests are Associated with Elevated Internalising and Externalising Symptoms in Children with Learning-related Problems

“…Our data therefore suggest internalising symptoms explain more of the discrepancies between everyday difficulties and task performance for working memory than for attention, and that externalising symptoms may explain some of the discrepancies between everyday difficulties and task performance for both attention and working memory. This pattern is consistent with earlier work reporting associations between working memory and depression, but not between attention and depression (Matthews et al, 2008), and links between working memory and internalising and externalising symptoms (Donati et al, 2021).…”

Dimensions of internalising symptoms are stable across early adolescence and predicted by executive functions: Longitudinal findings from the adolescent brain and cognitive development (ABCD) study

“…Finally, while our results suggest that executive function problems precede internalising problems, we cannot rule out the possibility of a reverse temporal association (e.g., Donati et al, 2021).…”

“…There are multiple accounts of the association between executive function and mental health. These include the interference hypothesis, which suggests psychological distress disrupts cognitive processing by shifting cognitive resources away from task-relevant information (Donati et al, 2021;Llewellyn et al, 2008;Stawski et al, 2006), and the dynamic mutualism hypothesis, which suggests mental health and cognitive function reciprocally interact over time, leading to a dynamic cycle of exacerbation across the lifespan (Fuhrmann et al, 2021). The cognitive reserve hypothesis, which suggests poor cognitive function impairs the downregulation of negative emotional responses, such as worry, fear or sadness, leading to poor mental health (LeMoult & Gotlib, 2019;Millan et al, 2012) is consistent with the notion that relatively poorer cognitive control in adolescence, combined with increasingly reactive subcortical regions involved in emotional and reward processing, make emotion regulation difficult for adolescents and confer increased risk for developing mental health difficulties (Crone & Dahl, 2012).…”

The Scarring Effects of Depression Symptoms on Sadness Rumination and Peer Victimization in Greek Early Adolescents: Evidence for an Integrated Symptoms-Driven Model

“…Most importantly, our findings seem to align with the “Scar Hypothesis” of depression which presumes that depression affects in an enduring and residual way multiple domains of individuals’ personality, including cognitive ones (e.g., Wichers et al, 2010). There is evidence suggesting that emotional well-being may affect the maturation of executive function (EF) during adolescence (Donati et al, 2021). As it was already mentioned, EF represents a set of inter-related but distinct higher-order pre-frontal cognitive control processes (e.g., inhibition control, flexibility of thought; Nyongesa et al, 2019) necessary to purposeful, goal-directed thoughts and behavior (Welsh et al, 1991).…”