ASSESSING PERSONALITY, PSYCHOPATHOLOGY, AND NEUROPHYSIOLOGY RELATIONSHIPS: A WITHIN-SUBJECTS META-ANALYTIC APPROACH

Abstract

Background. Emerging transdiagnostic frameworks now provide compelling classifications to characterize the core structure of latent systems underlying both psychopathology and neurophysiology measures indexing cognitive-affective systems. For psychopathology, a primary transdiagnostic model is the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP), which describes a broad internalizing factor (INT; characterizing comorbidity between fear and distress disorders), externalizing factor (EXT; aggression, disinhibition, and substance use), and general psychopathology factor (p-factor; indexing the shared variance between INT and EXT). To frame cognitive domains, the proposed work will utilize the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC), a transdiagnostic framework for indexing brain systems underlying cognitive-affective processing. A specific focus will be on positive valence (PV), negative valence (NV), and cognitive processes (COG) domains by utilizing the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ) and neurobiological EEG measures. Based on previous work in the lab and field, we expect all measures of psychopathology to relate similarly to the RDoC measures: increased NV, and decreased COG and PV. The project aimed to review this relationship in more traditional self-report measure only analyses, as well as through a novel within-subjects meta-analytic approach to, importantly, incorporate neural markers as an objective measure beyond the self-report measures. Methods. The project will utilize an archival dataset. The participants completed a self-report questionnaire battery and underwent a multi-task protocol of cognitive-affective tasks while EEG data was collected. Regression analyses were conducted with the collected self-report measures. A correlation table of the self-report measures correlated with the neural measures was used as the base data table with which meta-analyses (t-tests, regressions, and general linear models) were conducted. Results. Although p-factor related to the RDoC measures as expected, there were distinctions in the INT and EXT relationships. Of note, the regression results were consistent across both self-report and meta-analytic approaches. Discussion. The establishment of these relationships advances the goals of both transdiagnostic models by relating psychopathology (HiTOP) to cognitive processes (RDoC). The novel meta-analytic approach valuably adds objective neurophysiological measure information to the self-report data. Although not without its considerations, the meta-analytic approach can add to current analytical approaches, and future studies could aim to replicate and improve upon this methodology.