The Impact Of Characteristics Of Emotional Stimuli On Executive Function Of Subclinical Depression Individuals

In recent years,with the increasing occurrence of depression,researchers payed more attention on the executive control of subclinical depressed individuals.Furthermore,most studies aimed to explore whether these people have executive control(EF)deficit rather than elucidating how the emotional information like valence and arousal influence EF.The current study was designed to address the latter questions.We adopted the Stroop task and N-back task to investigated the inhibition control and updating(components of EF)for depressed and normal individual,respectively.In study one,there were twenty-eight subclinical depressed participants and thirty healthy controls.Valence was a within-subject factor with four levels: positive,neutral,negative and depressed-related.The results showed that:(1)In the Stroop task,there were no main effects and interaction effect.(2)Reaction times were influenced by the valence for the subclinical depressed participants in 0-back task.(3)Only main effect of valence was significant in 1-back and 2-back tasks.In study 2,there were 33 subclinical depressed participants and 32 healthy controls.Valence and arousal were within-subject factors.The former had three levels(positive,negative and depressed-related)while the latter had two levels(high-arousal and low-arousal).The results showed that:(1)In the Stroop task,there were no any significant effect for reaction time.However,for accuracy rate,valence had significant main effect.(2)For reaction time of0-back and 1-back tasks,there were significant main effects and valence had different effect on each level of arousal.There was also significant interaction effect between group and valence for accuracy rate of 0-back task.(3)In2-back task,main effect of valence and arousal were significant,the high and low arousal imposed varied effect onsubclinical depressed and healthy individuals.In summary,the conclusions of our study as follows:(1)Subclinical depressed individuals show impaired executive control relating to updatingwhile they have equivalent inhibition control as healthy control.(2)The EF of the subclinical depressed individuals is affected by valence,exclusively when they process negative stimuli.(3)The EF of the subclinical depressed individuals is affected by arousal,too.However,the effect of arousal is reducing with an increasing of the tasks demanding.