Cognitive flexibility in emotion-related perceptual decision-making and its link with depression

Abstract

Using traditional tasks like the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), deficits in cognitive flexibility have been well-documented in the literature among patients with major depressive disorder (MDD), with some studies showing that greater deficits were associated with higher levels of depressive symptomatology. However, efforts to study these deficits using emotion-laden stimuli have been few in number and narrow in scope so far. The aim of the current study was thus to address this research gap by studying learning and cognitive flexibility using a novel paradigm where facial expressions were used as the emotional stimuli, and to investigate how severity of depression affected extent of deficit in learning and cognitive flexibility. A total of 54 adults from the University of Hong Kong (HKU) were recruited to complete a computerised task that assessed learning and cognitive flexibility, as well as questionnaires that measured severity of symptoms. Results did not reveal any effect of depression severity associated with learning or cognitive flexibility in the context of emotional stimuli. Several limitations in the study’s design, such as the sampling method used, sample size, and difficulty level of the computerised task, were suggested as possible reasons underlying the insignificant findings. Nonetheless, in view of the current study’s successful development of a task that was capable of achieving the study’s aim, future attempts to replicate and extend this study were recommended after refinements and modifications to the study design are made.