Citation

Routledge KM, Burton KL, Williams LM, Harris A, Schofield PR, Clark CR, Gatt JM. Cogn. Emot. 2017; 31(7): 1465-1479.

Affiliation

School of Psychology , University of New South Wales , Sydney , NSW , Australia.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/02699931.2016.1232242

PMID

27690266

Abstract

Alterations to cognitive function are often reported with depression and anxiety symptoms, yet few studies have examined the same associations with mental well-being. This study examined the association between mental well-being, depression and anxiety symptoms and cognitive function in 1502 healthy adult monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twins, and the shared/unique contribution of genetic (G) and environmental (E) variance. Using linear mixed models, mental well-being was positively associated (p < .01) with sustained attention (β = 0.127), inhibition (β = 0.096), cognitive flexibility (β = 0.149), motor coordination (β = 0.114) and working memory (β = 0.156), whereas depression and anxiety symptoms were associated (p < .01) with poorer sustained attention (β = -0.134), inhibition (β = -0.139), cognitive flexibility (β = -0.116) and executive function (β = -0.139). Bivariate twin modelling showed well-being shared a small environmental correlation with motor coordination and a small genetic correlation with working memory. Trivariate twin modelling showed well-being shared a small genetic correlation with inhibition, whereas depression and anxiety symptoms shared a small environmental correlation with inhibition. The remaining variance was mostly driven by unique G and/or E variance. Overall, well-being and depression and anxiety symptoms show both independent and shared relationships with cognitive functions but this is largely attributable to unique G or E variance and small shared G/E variance between pairs of variables.

Language: en