Affective control in adolescence: The influence of age and depressive symptomatology on working memory.

People exhibit marked individual variation in their ability to exercise cognitive control in affectively charged situations. Affective control is typically assessed in laboratory settings by comparing performance in carefully constructed executive tasks performed in both affectively neutral and affectively charged contexts. There is some evidence that affective control undergoes significant improvement throughout adolescence, though it is unclear how adolescents deemed at risk of developing depression exercise affective control despite poor affective control being identified as a contributing factor to ongoing mental ill health in adulthood. The present study therefore investigated affective control in a large (