The effects of life experiences and polygenic risk for depression on the development of positive and negative cognitive biases across adolescence: The CogBIAS hypothesis

Background: Little is understood about the development of cognitive biases, despite their influential role in psychopathology and wellbeing. The Cognitive Bias (CogBIAS) hypothesis proposes that cognitive biases develop as a function of environmental influences (which determine the valence of biases), and the genetic susceptibility to those influences (which determines the potency of biases). The current study employed adolescent data from the CogBIAS Longitudinal Study to examine the CogBIAS hypothesis, using a polygenic-by-environment approach. Methods: Measures of life experiences and polygenic scores for depression were used to examine the development of memory and interpretation biases in a three-wave sample of adolescents (12-16 years). Mixed effects modeling was used to examine whether (negative and positive) life experiences, polygenic scores, and their interaction predicted various forms of the memory and interpretation biases. Results: Positive life experiences were shown to, respectively, diminish and enhance the negative and positive forms of memory recall and interpretation biases. Against expectation, negative life experiences and depression polygenic scores were not significant predictors of any cognitive outcomes, upon adjusting for psychopathology. Nonetheless, the interaction between polygenic risk and positive life events predicted a stronger positive social interpretation bias. Conclusions: These results provide the first line of polygenic evidence to support the CogBIAS and vantage sensitivity hypotheses, by demonstrating that polygenic risk for depression could interact with positive environmental influences to produce positive psychological outcomes during adolescence.