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Executive control of positive and negative information and adolescent depressive symptoms: cross-sectional and longitudinal associations in a population-based cohort

Background Large population-based studies of neuropsychological factors that characterize or precede depressive symptoms are rare. Most studies use small case-control or cross-sectional designs, which may cause selection bias and cannot test temporality. In a large UK population-based cohort we investigated cross-sectional and longitudinal associations between executive control of positive and negative information and adolescent depressive symptoms. Methods Cohort study of 2315 UK adolescents (ALSPAC) who completed an affective go/no-go task at age 18. Depressive symptoms were assessed with the Clinical Interview Schedule Revised (CIS-R) and short Mood and Feeling Questionnaire (sMFQ) at age 18, and with the sMFQ 15 months later. Analyses were linear multilevel regressions (for cross-sectional associations) and traditional linear regressions (for longitudinal associations), before and after adjustment for confounders. Results Cross-sectionally, at age 18, there was some evidence that adolescents with more depressive symptoms made more errors in executive control (after adjustments, errors increased by 0.17 of a point per 1 SD increase in sMFQ score, 95% CI 0.08 to 0.25). However, this cross-sectional association was not observed for the CIS-R (.03, 95% CI -.06 to .12). There was no evidence of a difference in executive control errors according to valence. Longitudinally, there was no evidence that reduced executive control was associated with future depressive symptoms. Conclusions Executive control of positive and negative information does not appear to be a marker of current or future depressive symptoms in adolescents and would therefore not be a useful target in interventions to prevent adolescent depression. According to our evidence, the affective go/no-go task is also not a good candidate for future neuroimaging studies of adolescent depression.