Abstract
The adverse impact of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) on the developing mind in adolescence can extend well into adulthood. The developmental malleability of cognitive control capacity in this age group, however, may hold particular promise for cognitive training interventions. The present study investigated the effects of affective working memory (aWMT) compared to placebo-training on cognitive and affective functioning in adolescents with PTSD. 30 treatment-seeking adolescents trained for 20 days on either an affective dual n-back task (aWMT; n = 15) or a feature match task (placebo; n = 15). The aWMT group showed greater pre-to post-training increases in cognitive control as measured by the GoNogo task as well as improvements in symptoms of PTSD and increased use of adaptive emotion regulation strategies. These preliminary findings are promising given the potential for free and easy dissemination of the aWMT in schools and online.
Highlights
The adverse impact of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) on the developing mind in adolescence can extend well into adulthood
We hypothesized that adolescents suffering from PTSD: would be able to train on the affective working memory training (aWMT) (H1) and that aWMT will lead to greater transferable gains in cognitive control, as measured on an untrained GoNogo task (Ghaderi, Khodadadi, & Abbasi, 2010), compared to a placebo-training (H2)
The primary aim of the present study was to investigate the possibility of improving cognitive control in adolescents suffering from PTSD using an aWMT task
Summary
The adverse impact of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) on the developing mind in adolescence can extend well into adulthood. The aWMT group showed greater pre-to post-training increases in cognitive control as measured by the GoNogo task as well as improvements in symptoms of PTSD and increased use of adaptive emotion regulation strategies. These preliminary findings are promising given the potential for free and easy dissemination of the aWMT in schools and online. Schweizer et al / Behaviour Research and Therapy 93 (2017) 88e94 interventions for PTSD to be successful at treating symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorders (Lee et al, 2016; Watts et al, 2013) These treatments place considerable demands on cognitive control over affective information (e.g., restructuring a trauma memory) and require patients to override pre-potent emotion regulatory responses to engage in more adaptive strategies. Improved emotion regulation and reduced posttraumatic stress symptoms were hypothesized to change as a function of improved cognitive control (H5)
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