Longitudinal and Cross-Sectional Associations Between Emotion Recognition Bias, Cognitive Abilities, and Mental Health in the ALSPAC Cohort

Background

Depression and anxiety are associated with negative emotion recognition biases and cognitive impairments. Better understanding of these relationships could inform potential interventions.

Aims

To examine the cross-sectional and bidirectional longitudinal relationships between depression, anxiety and wellbeing with emotion recognition bias, working memory and visual memory.

Methods

We examined these relationships in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) using data from ages 24 and 31-32 years (N = 3991) for longitudinal analysis and ages 31-32 for cross-sectional analysis. We ran linear regressions and reported models unadjusted and adjusted for baseline confounders.

Results

Cross-sectionally, higher depressive and anxiety symptoms were associated with negative emotion recognition bias ( b = −.025, 95%CI[−.042, −.009], p = .003; b = −.019, 95%CI[−.036, −.003], p = .023) but not with working memory errors ( b = .006, 95%CI[−.023, .034], p = .700; b = −.001, 95%CI[−.030, .028], p = .942), and visual memory ( b = .009, 95%CI[−.039, .014], p = .658; b = .008, 95%CI[−.029, .045], p = .658).

Longitudinally, depression predicted negative emotion recognition bias in later years ( b = −.362, 95%CI[−.630, −.094], p = .008). There was no evidence that depression predicted higher working memory errors or lower visual memory performance ( b = .105, 95%CI[−.344, .554], p = .645; b = −.024, 95%CI[−.598, .549], p = .933). Lower accuracy in recognising happy faces predicted future depression ( b = −.176, 95%CI[−.274, −.079], p < .001), but not sad faces ( b = .073, 95%CI[−.027, .174], p = .152) and overall accuracy ( b = −.012, 95%CI[−.041, .016], p = .388). No differences were found between remitted and current depression in emotion recognition bias or cognitive abilities ( p > .05).

Conclusions

These findings suggest that negative emotion recognition bias may be both a symptom and a risk factor for depression, with cross-sectional and longitudinal associations. Cross-sectionally, it appears more linked to general mental health than depression alone. While cognitive abilities show no strong relationship with mental health.