Emotion Regulation, Cognitive Control, Rumination and History of Depression

Abstract

Depression is a highly recurrent disorder characterized by emotion dysregulation, cognitive control impairments and ruminative response style. There are no published studies on emotion regulation in previously depressed participants and the existing data on the relationship between rumination, cognitive control and emotion regulation is mixed. There were two main aims of this study: The first was to investigate emotion regulation, cognitive control and rumination in previously depressed as compared to never depressed participants. The second was to investigate the relationship that cognitive control and rumination have to emotion regulation in all participants. Participants were 13 previously depressed and 19 never before depressed adults between the ages of 18-58 who were enrolled in an emotion regulation experiment. Negative emotions were induced by emotionally arousing pictures and the participants were instructed to down-regulate their emotional reactions, which were measured by a numerical rating scale (NRS). Cognitive control was measured by a version of the STROOP test and ruminative response style was measured by questionnaire. There were no group differences on any of the main measures, indicating that history of depression did not influence emotion regulation success, cognitive control or tendency to ruminate. Across all participants, emotion regulation was dependent upon the cognitive control measure of Switching/Cognitive flexibility. These results highlight the importance of cognitive control in emotion regulation.