Relationship between trait rumination and imbalanced working memory: Analysis at the latent variable and individual task levels

Abstract

The relationship between trait rumination and working memory has not been well established. Previous studies have shown that high ruminators have poor working memory in general, while others have shown that they have superior working memory ability. Therefore, we tested the hypothesis that high ruminators have an imbalanced working memory ability, with inferior updating and superior attentional control abilities. A total of 178 graduate and undergraduate students completed three updating tasks: spatial 2-back, running memory, and memory updating; three attentional control tasks: Stroop, Eriksen flanker, and antisaccade; and two short-term memory tasks: dot matrix and digit span. Results of the latent variable analysis did not show any significant relationships between working memory factors, maladaptive brooding, and adaptive reflection. However, we observed imbalanced working memory at the individual task level, and increased reflection associated with superior antisaccade task performance and poor Stroop task performance. These findings suggest that high ruminators have an imbalanced working memory ability across task-specific components inherent in each task, such as oculomotor inhibition. Researchers should investigate the relationships between trait rumination and working memory, especially the aspects of superior ability, in more detail in further studies.