Individuals who have experienced traumatic brain injury (TBI) are at an elevated risk for worsened physical and psychological outcomes. Increased rates of anxiety and depression, along with cognitive issues, are common post-TBI. While there is some evidence that anxiety and depression may affect objective cognitive performance, less is known about their effect on other factors that are associated with the individual’s capacity to complete the task, such as perceived workload of the cognitive task. Workload represents an individual’s perception of task difficulty and serves as a proxy for the magnitude of mental demands a given task places on an individual. Preliminary findings in the literature suggest that individuals with TBI commonly report greater workload when completing cognitive tasks compared to neurotypical peers, but the influence of anxiety and depression on survivors’ workload remains unclear. Considering the elevated rates of psychological and cognitive problems in individuals with TBI, the present study examined the moderating role of anxiety and depression on TBI survivor workload perception of a stress-inducing working memory task.

Ten participants with moderate to severe TBI and eight neurologically healthy controls performed the Paced Auditory Serial Addition Task (PASAT). After completing the PASAT, participants reported their subjective workload using the NASA task load index (NASA-TLX). Participants also completed measures of psychological functioning, including the Chicago Multiscale Depression Inventory (CMDI) and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI). Relationships between workload and depression and trait anxiety were examined using linear regression.

Linear regression was employed for both the TBI and the healthy control groups to assess the influence of trait anxiety and depression on perceived workload. There was no significant difference between the TBI and HC NASA perceived workload scores. Within the TBI group, there was a significant anxiety by depression interaction (b = -.015, p < .001). Simple slopes analyses revealed that for TBI participants reporting low depression, perceived workload increased with increased anxiety (b = .093, p < .001). For TBI participants reporting high depression, perceived workload decreased as anxiety increased (b = -.38, p = .03). While there was also significant anxiety by depression interaction in the healthy control group (b = .033, p = .04), simple slopes analyses revealed that there were no significant associations for healthy controls.

These results demonstrate that in TBI, level of depression moderates the relationship between anxiety and workload perception. The pattern observed in the TBI group was unique from controls. The present findings suggest that post-TBI, higher depression may temper the influence of anxiety on stressful cognitive task performance and workload rating. The tempering effect of high depression in TBI may represent a biased reporting style or impaired assessment of task difficulty, which may ultimately affect the individual’s capacity to accomplish a task well.