Clinical Brown Bag

Lisa O'Donnell, Clinical / Social Work Psychology Graduate Student

Thursday, April 19, 2012, 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
3021 East Hall

Event Information

Abstract:

Cognitive flexibility requires the ability to develop and maintain an appropriate problem-solving strategy across changing stimulus conditions in order to achieve future goals (Heaton, 1993). A deficit in this cognitive process could result in increased vulnerability to stressors and compromised management of daily functioning. A review of the current literature suggests that cognitive inflexibility is a trait found in all phases of bipolar disorder (BD; Goodwin et al., 2008), however, the degree of the deficit varies based on symptoms including psychosis (Osuji and Cullum, 2005; Glahn et al., 2007). In addition, individuals with BD tend to exhibit high reactivity to emotional stimuli and therefore may demonstrate even greater inflexibility when emotional-valenced stimuli are introduced (M’Bailara et al., 2009; Houshmand et al., 2010). No research is available on the influence of psychosis on cognitive flexibility and emotional reactivity within BD. We investigated cognitive flexibility in a Bipolar Disorder with psychosis group (BDp=27), Bipolar Disorder without psychosis group (BDn=17) and healthy controls (HC=20) using the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task (WCST) and an emotionally-valenced version, Emotion Card Sorting Task (ECST). BDp had a significantly larger number of perseverative errors (p<.05) indicative of less cognitive flexibility compared to the BDn and HC groups during ECST tasks not WCST. Results indicate that the presence of psychosis may lead to cognitive flexibility deficits when emotional stimuli are introduced. Therefore, it is important to consider bipolar disorder as a non-homogenous group in which certain phenotypic characteristics may lead to an emotional vulnerability resulting in poorer functioning and quality of life.