Final Report Summary - COGBIAS (Cognitive Biases - Windows into the Mechanisms underlying Emotional Vulnerability and Resilience)
This study investigated selective cognitive biases in attention, interpretation of ambiguity, and memory as well as approach-avoidance tendencies toward highly rewarding cues such as high fat/high sugar foods and alcohol. The study was innovative in measuring a range of these cognitive processes and also taking genetic profiles into account. We conducted several large scale studies with both adults and adolescents with a large longitudinal study in which we followed 506 school students from the age of 12/13 years to the age of 16/17 years (415 were tested in the final wave, which is a loss of just 19% of our sample). There were several interesting findings and we showed that certain patterns of cognitive biases were important determinants of resilient functioning. We also showed that combinations of negative interpretation and memory biases were important determinants of internalising problems such as depression and anxiety. We also found that certain combinations of 'polygenic risk scores' and 'poly-cognitive biases' were associated with some mental health outcomes. The project consolidates the CogBIAS hypothesis that states that certain groups of genes can lead to greater sensitivity to the environment, that in turn, lead to the development of certain patterns of processing information (cognitive biases), which in turn determine either good or poor mental health outcomes.