How general are the effects of trait anxiety and depressive symptoms on cognitive functioning?

Abstract

A total of 3,781 healthy adults between 18 and 97 years of age completed trait anxiety and depressive symptoms inventories and also performed a battery of cognitive tests. Consistent with recent research on cognitive abilities, the cognitive variables could be organized into a hierarchical structure, with 5 first-order abilities and a single g-factor representing the variance common to the first-order abilities at the top of the hierarchy. Analyses were conducted to determine where in this hierarchy effects associated with trait anxiety and depressive symptoms were operating. The results indicated that trait anxiety and depressive symptoms had significant relations at the highest level in the hierarchy of cognitive abilities, but few relations of either characteristic were evident on the cognitive abilities, or on measures of working memory, after controlling influences at the g-factor level.

Figure 1

Schematic illustration of how the influences of trait anxiety, depressive symptoms, and other predictors are examined at different levels in a hierarchical structure of cognitive abilities.

Figure 2

Means and standard errors of age- and sex-partialed residual cognitive ability composite scores as a function of successive quartiles in the distribution of scores on the depressive symptoms questionnaire.

Figure 3

Means and standard errors of age- and sex-partialed residual cognitive ability composite scores as a function of successive quartiles in the distribution of scores on the trait anxiety questionnaire.