| dc.description.abstract | Executive function, especially inhibitory control has shown to play
an important role in Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Impaired inhibitory control is found to be related to PTSD and
PTSD symptom severity. Researchers are still disagreeing about
the relationship between inhibitory control and the four PTSD
symptom clusters (intrusions, avoidance, emotional numbing and
hyperarousal). The current study examines whether the four
PTSD symptom clusters can be predicted by inhibitory control.
Forty-one Dutch military veterans and active military staff
members with PTSD completed the online questionnaires Beck
Depression Inventory (BDI-II), PTSD Checklist for DSM-5 (PCL-
5), Life Events Checklist for DSM-5 (LEC-5) and a Go/No-Go
task, as a measure for inhibitory control. A hierarchical
multivariate regression analysis was conducted. At the first stage
depression was treated as predictor to control the influence of
the comorbidity. At the second stage inhibitory control was
added as predictor. The analyses did not reveal a multivariate
effect of inhibitory control on the symptom clusters. Comorbid
depression, however, appears to have great predictive value for
the clusters. Thus, inhibitory control may not be able to predict
the four PTSD symptom clusters, whereas depression does. This
could be explained by a cluster-exceeding influence of inhibitory
control, or alternatively with various methodological limitations,
as sample size of uncontrolled environment of the task. | |
