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UBC Theses and Dissertations

Gender moderates the relationship between mood disorder symptoms and effortful avoidance performance Forys, Brandon Jonathan

Abstract

We must often decide how much effort to exert to avoid undesirable outcomes or obtain rewards, or whether to withhold action altogether. In depression and anxiety, levels of avoidance tend to be excessive and reward-seeking is reduced. Furthermore, the cost of effort deployment to avoid aversive outcomes or obtain reward may be overweighed with higher depressive symptoms. Understanding how such dimensional behaviours in mood disorder symptoms arise is hampered by outstanding questions about the links between motivated action and inhibition and depressive symptoms, and whether these differ with comorbid anxiety. Furthermore, gender differences are present in the incidence and manifestation of depression and anxiety, but the impact of these gender differences on avoidance and reward-seeking behaviours has not yet been characterized. Here, a reverse-translated task from animal studies was used to examine the relationship between negative affect and performance on effortful active and inhibitory avoidance (Study 1) and reward seeking (Study 2), and whether these effects are moderated by gender. Undergraduates and paid online workers (NAvoid = 545, NReward = 310; NFemale = 368, NMale = 450, MAge = 22.58, RangeAge = 17-62) were assessed on the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II) and the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) and performed an instructed online avoidance or reward-seeking task. Participants had to make multiple presses on active trials and withhold presses on inhibitory trials to avoid an unpleasant sound (Study 1) or obtain points towards a monetary reward (Study 2). On active trials, physical effort (number of key presses) was increased on a progressive ratio schedule every 20 trials. Overall, men deployed more effort than women in both avoidance and reward-seeking, and anxiety symptoms were negatively associated with active reward-seeking accuracy regardless of gender. Gender moderated the relationship between anxiety symptoms and inhibitory avoidance, such that women with higher anxiety showed reduced inhibitory avoidance accuracy. Anxiety symptoms interacted with depressive symptom levels in active avoidance only. Our results illuminate gender differences in the relationship between mood disorder symptoms and the motivation to actively and effortfully respond to obtain positive and avoid negative outcomes.

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Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International