Inhibitory control and mood in relation to psychological resilience: an ecological momentary assessment study.

Psychological resilience, the ability to adapt to adversity, is theorized to rely on intact inhibitory control (IC) mechanisms, which underlie one's ability to maintain goal-directed behavior by inhibiting prepotent responses. However, no study to date has explored daily fluctuations of IC performance in relation to resilience. Here, we examined the association between IC and mood measured daily in relation to psychological resilience in young adults in a stressful situation. Baseline resilience was obtained from 144 female and male soldiers during their basic combat training. Then, participants completed an ecological momentary assessment protocol, in which they reported their momentary mood and completed a short IC assessment twice/day for 2 weeks. A hierarchical linear modeling analysis revealed that psychological resilience moderated the relationship between momentary IC and momentary mood, such that better IC was associated with better mood only for those with higher, but not lower, self-reported psychological resilience at baseline. These results show that psychological resilience is manifested in the everyday association between IC and mood. Furthermore, they lend important support to cognitive models of resilience and may have significant contribution to our understanding of resilient behavior in real life.Trial Registration: MOH_2018-0-13_002451.

Feasibility and preliminary effectiveness of mobile cognitive control training during basic combat training in the military.

Periods of stressful events, such as those experienced during combat training in the military, may lead to psychological distress and reduced quality of life (QoL). Mental resilience, the capacity to overcome negative effects of setbacks on performance, may help protect one from the adversities associated with basic combat training. Among the factors contributing to mental resilience is cognitive control, the mechanism which helps maintain our goal directed behavior. Here we examined the feasibility of a mobile cognitive control training (CCT) app to engage young adults during their basic military training with the intention of improving resilience, mental health and QoL. 153 participants were randomly assigned to complete 2-3 weeks of either mobile CCT (n = 74) or active control training (ACT, mobile games; n = 79). Resilience, QoL, mood and self-efficacy were assessed at baseline and post-intervention. Participants completed, on average, 7.28 ± 3.03 training sessions (out of the planned 14), indicating relatively low feasibility of CCT during basic combat training period and inconsistent engagement with training. In addition, there was lack of improvement in the training tasks ('target engagement'). Accordingly, no significant time by group interactions were found on any of the outcome measures, potentially due to the limited feasibility. We conclude that short-term mobile CCT has low feasibility during basic combat training and discuss the results of this study considering factors that might have contributed to the lack of feasibility of the training protocol.

Ecological Momentary Mood, Resilience, and Mental Health Status as Predictors of Quality of Life Among Young Adults Under Stress: A Structural Equation Modeling Analysis.

Multiple internal factors, such as psychological resilience and mental health status, have been shown to contribute to overall quality of life (QoL). However, very few studies to date have examined how these factors contribute to QoL of youth and young adults in a stressful situation. Here, we studied the contribution of these factors, as well as of ecological momentary mood assessment, to QoL of young army recruits during their Basic Training Combat (BCT). To this end, we collected data from 156 male and female soldiers in a mixed-gender unit in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Using a mobile app installed on participants' phones, participants provided self-reports regarding their mental health status and psychological resilience at baseline, and QoL 2 weeks later. Momentary mood reporting was further collected during the 2-week interval period using a daily self-report mood scale (IMS-12). Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to examine the interrelationships among the study variables based on a hypothesized model. We found that a model with all factors (gender, resilience, mental health status and momentary mood) provided a good fit for the data based on its fit indices [χ2(38) = 47.506, p = 0.139, CFI = 0.979, NFI = 0.910, RMSEA = 0.040, TLI = 0.964]. However, the only direct contributors to QoL were gender and momentary mood, accounting together for 61.5% of the variance of QoL. Psychological resilience and mental health status contributed to QoL only indirectly, through their associations with momentary mood. Collectively, these results highlight the importance of ecological momentary assessment of mental-health related factors such as mood to the prediction of QoL in young adults under stress. These findings may have broader implications for monitoring and improvement of well-being in young healthy populations as well as in clinical ones.