Working memory performance is related to childhood trauma but not psychotic-like experiences in a nonpsychiatric sample

Ered, Chun, O'Brien, Creatura & Ellman (2023) published “Working Memory Performance is Related to Childhood Trauma but not Psychotic-Like Experiences in a Nonpsychiatric Sample” in Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy. Here’s the edited abstract and impact statement:

This project seeks to clarify the impact of childhood trauma and psychotic-like experiences (PLEs) on working memory (WM) and explore gender differences in these relationships. The effect of childhood trauma on WM performance has yet to be explored in individuals with PLEs, despite consistent associations between trauma, psychosis spectrum symptoms, and WM performance. In 466 undergraduates, positive PLEs (Prodromal Questionnaire) and trauma (Childhood Trauma Questionnaire) were examined to determine contributions to WM performance on a spatial n-back task. We conducted hierarchical linear regressions on the total sample and stratified by gender to examine the effects of childhood trauma, positive PLEs, and their interaction on WM performance. Supplemental analyses explored attenuated negative and disorganized symptoms. Controlling for age, there were no significant main effects of positive PLEs, childhood trauma, their interaction, or three-way interaction including gender in predicting WM. After stratifying by gender, childhood trauma was significantly associated with poorer WM in females only. Post hoc analyses revealed that in the full sample, physical neglect predicted WM performance and was a trend for females, while sexual abuse trended toward predicting WM in males. Supplemental analyses of attenuated negative and disorganized symptoms revealed childhood trauma significantly predicted WM in the full sample and females only for negative symptoms. Females who have experienced childhood trauma may be at greater risk for WM problems, irrespective of co-occurring PLEs, suggesting that cognitive difficulties may be partially attributable to history of trauma. These findings have potential implications for intervention strategies in trauma-exposed individuals. 

In a sample of diverse undergraduates experiencing a range of psychotic-like experiences (PLEs), childhood trauma, PLEs, and their interaction were not related to performance on a task that assessed spatial working memory (WM). After examining males and females separately, childhood trauma significantly predicted worse WM performance in females only. These findings have implications for cognitive deficits in females who have experienced childhood trauma, and that these individuals may be at particular risk for the development of cognitive difficulties. Clinically, assessment of cognitive deficits in females with a history of childhood trauma should be considered, and interventions such as cognitive remediation may be warranted. 

Long, Zhou, Zhang, Zhang & Zhou (2023) published “Effects of Working Memory Training on Different Goals of Cognitive Reappraisal” in Emotion.  

Working memory training (WMT) has shown potential benefits in emotion regulation (ER), mainly in terms of improved ability to downregulate negative emotions in cognitive reappraisal. However, the goal of cognitive reappraisal can be not only to reduce negative emotion but also to increase negative emotion. It is not clear what effect WMT has on the upregulation of negative emotion. In the current study, we conducted a 20-day WMT with participants to explore the effects of training on the down- and upregulation of negative emotion and followed participants for 3 months after training to examine the persistent effects of training. Our results suggest that participants in the training group improved their ability to regulate negative emotions in both the down- and upregulation conditions. Notably, benefits from training were also observed in the look negative condition, suggesting that WMT may elicit general cognitive enhancement that is broadly transferable to any kind of negative situation to help individuals regulate the effects of negative emotions. In addition, our study also showed that the improvement in negative ER by training could last even over 3 months.