Date of Award

2016

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Psychology

Abstract

Depression is one of the most prevalent and devastating psychological disorders, often with a chronic or remitting/reoccurring course. The inability to effectively cope with stress and negative life events has been strongly linked to the development and maintenance of depression symptoms; yet, the cognitive and biological processes underlying the complex and multidimensional behavioral construct of coping are not well understood. Using a combination of self-report measures, computerized cognitive tasks, and scalp electroencephalography (EEG) methodologies, the present study investigated associations between specific executive function abilities (i.e., inhibition and set-shifting), underlying neural activity, coping strategy and flexibility, and depression symptoms. Results did not support the primary study hypotheses predicting coping to mediate the relation between executive dysfunction and depression symptoms. Post-hoc correlational analyses elucidated relations between various components of coping strategy and depression symptomatology, and further demonstrated associations with frontocentral N200/P300 and parietal P300 peak latencies.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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