Examining the Connectivity of Anhedonia and Reward Devaluation in a Network of Behavioral Tasks Over Time

Avoidant processing of positive emotional information and facilitatory processing of negative emotional information are related to the experience of anhedonia and anxiety. However, how these cognitive processes inter-relate with self-report symptoms of psychopathology over time is unclear. The current study thus examined behavioral indices of perception, attention, and affective updating in relation to self-report measures of anhedonia and anxiety in dynamic network models at six separate time-points among participants preselected for a wide-range of depression symptoms (N = 101). Findings suggest that two different pathways are associated with emotional information processing over time: one represents an anhedonic circuit, and the second represents a two-node reward devaluation circuit. The first pathway reveals how anhedonia and cognitive functioning are related over time (and, potentially, across levels of analysis) and could inform future longitudinal studies of anhedonic individuals. The second pathway represents a theoretical advance in the conceptualization of reward devaluation by further demonstrating that attentional avoidance and perceptual avoidance of positivity are inter-related. Future studies and network analyses that evaluate anhedonia and devaluative processing of positivity, and that replicate these innovative methods, are needed to elucidate how avoidance of positivity and anhedonia are related as part of a causal system of self-reported symptoms and behavioral tasks.