Misremembrance of things past : depression is associated with difficulties in the recollection of both specific and categoric autobiographical memories
Abstract
Impaired retrieval of specific, autobiographical memories of personally experienced events is characteristic of major depressive disorder (MDD). However, findings in subclinical samples suggest that the reduced specificity phenomenon may reflect a broader impairment in the deliberate retrieval of all autobiographical memory types. This experiment (N=68) explored this possibility by requiring individuals with and without MDD to complete a cued-recall task which required retrieval of specific, single-incident memories to a block of cues, retrieval of categoric, general memories to a block of cues, and to alternate between retrieval of specific and general memories for a block of cues. Results demonstrated that relative to never-depressed controls, individuals with MDD experience reduced recall of both specific (d=0.48) and general memories (d=1.00), along with reduced flexibility in alternating between specific and general memories (d=0.90). Findings support further development of autobiographical memory-based interventions which target a range of retrieval deficits, rather than specificity alone.
Citation
Hitchcock , C , Rodrigues , E , Rees , C , Gormley , S , Dritschel , B & Dalgleish , T 2019 , ' Misremembrance of things past : depression is associated with difficulties in the recollection of both specific and categoric autobiographical memories ' , Clinical Psychological Science , vol. 7 , no. 4 , pp. 693-700 . https://doi.org/10.1177/2167702619826967
Publication
Clinical Psychological Science
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
2167-7026Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © The Author(s) 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
Description
Funding was provided by the UK Medical Research Council.Collections
Items in the St Andrews Research Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.