Depressive and Anxiety Symptoms in Late Adolescents Correlate with Greater Affective Sensitivity to Emotional Schema Acquisition

• In Event: Poster Session 07
  In Poster Session: PS 07 Topic - Cognitive Processes

Abstract

Background: Emotional schemas are theorized to cause and maintain biased, maladaptive beliefs of oneself and the world, which leads to psychopathology, particularly internalizing problems. Fear conditioning research finds that higher anxiety is associated with impaired discrimination between safety and threat cues. Meanwhile, depressive symptoms are linked to altered reward learning and blunted response to pleasurable stimuli. These literatures point to a connection between internalizing problems and emotional processes, however the relationships between depressive and anxiety symptoms and emotional schema learning have yet to be evaluated.

Objective: The current study aimed to examine whether depressive or anxiety symptoms were related to emotional schema acquisition among late adolescents.

Methods: Pilot participants were undergraduates enrolled in introductory psychology courses in the Fall of 2019 (N=29; Age: M=19.2, SD=1.3; 93% female; race/ethnicity: 38% white, 24% asian, 14% black, 14% multi-racial/ethnic, 7% hispanic/latinx, 3% other). The Brief Symptom Inventory assessed anxiety and depressive symptoms. Pilot participants completed a novel computerized emotional schema acquisition task, where they were presented with fribbles, made-up animal-like figures that made positive, neutral, or negative sounds based on body type. Participants had to predict what sounds fribbles made until they reached 90% accuracy. In addition, 6 pilot participants completed affect ratings of fribbles before and after the task to assess their acquisition of the affective component of the emotional schema. Data collection for the full study commenced in January 2020, but was halted in March 2020 due to COVID-19 (sample: N=54, Age: M=21.8, SD=4.6; 76% female; race/ethnicity: 39% white, 26% asian, 9% black, 13% multi-racial/ethnic, 9% hispanic/latinx, 4% other). Data collection will be completed virtually in Fall 2021.

Results: Higher depressive and anxiety symptoms were associated with slower emotional schema acquisition rates, and this relationship did not differ by emotional valence. There was a large positive correlation between anxiety and change in the affective valence of positive fribbles (r=.76), such that higher anxiety was associated with greater increases in positive affect associated with positive fribbles. By contrast, there were strong negative correlations between anxiety and changes in Fribble affect ratings for both negative fribbles (r=-.89) and neutral fribbles (r=-.91), such that higher anxiety was associated with greater decreases in negative affect associated with these Fribble types. The pattern of findings was similar, albeit less robust, for depressive symptoms (Figure 1). A power analysis using MonteCarlo simulations was run using conservative parameter estimates in a multilevel model examining depressive symptoms and fribble ratings, which indicated that a minimum of 20 participants are needed to reach a 90% power to detect this effect (Figure 2).

Expected Results and Discussion: These preliminary findings suggest that late adolescents with higher internalizing symptoms had a robust acquisition of the affective component of newly learned emotional schemas despite similar behavioral acquisition rates. This pattern was especially striking for anxiety. Future studies should investigate the relationships between internalizing problems and emotional schema learning in children to examine developmental differences.

Authors

• Nathan Martin, Columbia University
  Presenting Author

• Anna Vannucci, Columbia University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sapna Karina Patel, Columbia University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Medina Shah, Columbia University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ariel Katz, Columbia University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Maya Raphaella Shustik, New York State Psychiatric Institute
  Non-Presenting Author

• Nim Tottenham, Columbia University
  Non-Presenting Author