Autobiographical memory specificity and emotional disorder.

In the paper

“The overall mean effect size for the 28 out of 30 studies in Table 1 for which sufficient data were available to compute Cohen's d statistic is 0.94 (IQR = 0.57)—a large effect size.”

In the paper

“Eleven studies show a significant difference between depressed patients and matched controls, yielding a mean effect size (Cohen's d) of 1.12 (interquartile range [IQR] = 0.44).”

In the paper

“The phenomenon occurs whether specificity or overgenerality is used as an outcome variable and whether studies examine depressed or suicidal patients or dysphoric nonclinical samples.”

In the paper

“Iqbal, Birchwood, Hemsley, Jackson, and Morris's (2004) study of postpsychotic depression found no overall main effect, though there was an effect for positive cue words.”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Iqbal, Birchwood, Hemsley, Jackson, and Morris's (2004)

In the paper

“The data suggest that a history of traumatic experiences is closely linked to the occurrence of overgeneral memory deficits, and this occurs despite the fact that individuals are not being asked to retrieve memories related to their trauma.”

In the paper

“Unlike dysphoria, in which overgenerality is found, it is not found in individuals with high trait anxiety (Richards & Whittaker, 1990).”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Richards & Whittaker, 1990

In the paper

“On the other hand, those studies that have used different cuing procedures (e.g., Moore et al., 1988, which used vignettes such as “Recall a time when a neighbour helped you with a practical problem”) have reported large effect sizes (1.15 in this study), suggesting that the phenomenon is relatively robust across different cuing procedures.”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Moore et al., 1988

In the paper

“(b) problems in imagining future events, with overgenerality for past events predicting nonspecificity in specifying future events (Williams et al., 1996)”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Williams et al., 1996

In the paper

“In borderline personality disorder, although one early study found more overgeneral memory in such patients (Jones et al., 1999), other studies that have taken account of comorbid diagnoses have not found it (Arntz et al., 2002; Kremers et al., 2004).”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Jones et al., 1999
• Not checked yetcites Arntz et al., 2002
• Not checked yetcites Kremers et al., 2004

In the paper

“Although the majority of studies have found evidence of an association between memory specificity and trauma, there are some that have failed to replicate this effect (Arntz, Meeren, & Wessel, 2002; Kremers, Spinhoven, & Van der Does, 2004; Peeters, Wessel, Merckelbach, & Boon-Vermeeren, 2002; Wessel, Meeren, Peeters, Arntz, & Merckelbach, 2001; Wilhelm, McNally, Baer, & Florin, 1997).”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Arntz, Meeren, & Wessel, 2002
• Not checked yetcites Kremers, Spinhoven, & Van der Does, 2004
• Not checked yetcites Peeters, Wessel, Merckelbach, & Boon-Vermeeren, 2002

In the paper

“However, what is clear from the data is that, notwithstanding the methodological noise and variety across the studies, the effects are remarkably consistent and the effect sizes large.”

In the paper

“In conclusion, we still cannot be sure the extent to which overgeneral memory prior to trauma renders people vulnerable for developing emotional problems following trauma experience or how much the trauma itself negatively affects memory specificity.”

In the paper

“On the other hand, they did find, as predicted, a close association with a measure of source memory—that is, misassignment of correctly recognized words to the “wrong” (distractor) list—and that both overgeneral memory and poor source memory were associated with rumination (even after partialing out depression).”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Raes, Hermans, Williams, Demyttenaere, et al. (2006)

In the paper

“They found that specificity of autobiographical retrieval was found to be positively related to remembering (which requires recollection of contextual detail—the circumstances in which the word was previously seen) but not to knowing (which does not).”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Ramponi et al. (2004)

In the paper

“A third possible methodological limitation is that the published studies have tended to examine either depression (see Table 1) or patients with a history of trauma (see Table 2). Authors naturally attribute differences found between the clinical and control groups to the variable of interest (depression or trauma), and few studies have examined both (though see Kuyken, Howell, & Dalgleish, 2006).”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Kuyken, Howell, & Dalgleish, 2006

In the paper

“the mean effect sizes for those studies of trauma that give sufficient information to compute them were 0.97 for positive and 0.82 for negative cues.”

In the paper

“Second, Barnard, Watkins, and Ramponi (2006) showed that inducing normal participants to repeatedly return to the same higher order theme during a category generation task increased overgeneral memory, relative to inducing category generation that shifts across themes, but that this effect occurred only for self-related themes.”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Barnard, Watkins, and Ramponi (2006)

In the paper

“Overall, the studies that reported sufficient data to compute effect sizes for different cue-valence conditions show that differences between depressed and control participants in overgenerality to positive cues yield an effect size of 0.91, whereas that for negative cues is 0.48.”

In the paper

“Of the 12 studies in Table 2, only 2 reported that overgenerality in response to negative cues was associated with trauma (Dalgleish et al., 2003; Peeters et al., 2002), 9 reported that trauma history is associated with both valences, and 1 reported that negative cues elicited more specific memories (Burnside et al., 2004).”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Dalgleish et al., 2003
• Not checked yetcites Peeters et al., 2002
• Not checked yetcites Burnside et al., 2004

In the paper

“In particular, they were able to show that overgeneral errors correlated with tasks in which irrelevant material needed to be inhibited (the Emotional Stroop Test) and not with a task that merely requires sufficient executive capacity overall (a test of explicit memory of equivalent difficulty).”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Dalgleish et al. (in press)

In the paper

“In a series of studies in dysphoric individuals, Dalgleish et al. demonstrated that this was indeed the case: Levels of memory overgenerality correlated highly with levels of task errors on a range of executive paradigms with little or no relationship to autobiography, memory, or emotion while, in most cases, being unrelated to overall performance levels on these tasks.”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Dalgleish et al. (in press)

In the paper

“Williams et al. (2006, Study 3) required participants to retrieve autobiographical memories while performing random button pressing as a secondary task, as generation of a random pattern has been suggested as a paradigmatic example of a task requiring high levels of central executive control (Baddeley, 1996). They found that this task did interfere with specific memory retrieval, but only when”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Williams et al. (2006, Study 3)

In the paper

“Williams et al. (1996) found that suicidal patients were generally poorer than controls at generating specific events that might happen to them in the future, and that this difficulty was correlated with overgenerality in memory.”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Williams et al. (1996)

In the paper

“The results showed that (a) the treatment significantly reduced overgenerality (particularly in response to neutral cues), (b) it significantly reduced hopelessness and depression (compared with a no-treatment control), and (c) the effect on mood was mediated by the increased specificity of memory.”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Serrano, Latorre, Gatz, and Rodriguez (2004)

In the paper

“The above studies have found significant associations between memory specificity and both of these measures.”

In the paper

“Results showed that participants who were induced to be categorical in their retrieval for past events in the study phase of the experiment generated less specific future events during the test phase. Participants who were induced to be specific in their memory in the study phase produced more specific future events in the test phase.”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Williams et al. (1996)

In the paper

“In addition, there is an increasing body of evidence to suggest that depression is associated with intrusive and avoidance symptomatology regarding prior distressing life events (Dalgleish & Power, 2004), with studies revealing few differences between clinically depressed individuals and those with PTSD in terms of the nature of these symptoms (Reynolds & Brewin, 1998).”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Dalgleish & Power, 2004
• Not checked yetcites Reynolds & Brewin, 1998

In the paper

“However, these studies either involved low levels of trauma or focused on depression or personality disorders rather than trauma as their primary research question.”

In the paper

“If there is an encoding failure, ESK will be impoverished in individuals with depression (and other conditions) so that any preponderance of categorical responses to word cues will arise because autobiographical information is more likely to be encoded in abstracted ways in these groups.”

In the paper

“If environmental adversity is found to have long-term impact on an individual, then it can do so only by producing either long-term changes in the environment or long-term changes in the individual.”

In the paper

“Everyone needs access to both episodic information and general summary information to navigate successfully through the interpersonal and instrumental demands of daily living.”

In the paper

“Conway and Pleydell-Pearce (2000) described autobiographical memories as “transitory dynamic mental constructions generated from an underlying knowledge base” (p. 261).”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Conway and Pleydell-Pearce (2000)

In the paper

“These models converge on the view that intrusive images or memories and flashbacks arise from the relatively automatic activation of mnemonic material related to the trauma”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Brewin, 2001
• Not checked yetcites Brewin, Dalgleish, & Joseph, 1996
• Not checked yetcites Ehlers & Clark, 2000

In the paper

“Overgenerality in memory may be just such a long-term effect.”

In the paper

“Their model includes three levels of representation within the autobiographical knowledge base (see Figure 1).”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Conway and Pleydell-Pearce (2000)

In the paper

“Conway and Pleydell-Pearce's (2000) explanation of overgeneral memory is that the recollection of general descriptions may produce less affect than the recollection of specific episodic memories, thus enabling current goal pursuit to be maintained in the face of potential deflection.”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Conway and Pleydell-Pearce's (2000)

In the paper

“This theory conceptualizes voluntary retrieval as “a process in which some information about a target item is used to construct a description of the item and this description is used in attempts to recover new fragments of information” (M. D. Williams & Hollan, 1981, p. 87).”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites M. D. Williams & Hollan, 1981

In the paper

“We conclude that although overgenerality in autobiographical memory is likely related in some cases to general memory deficits, it is not wholly explained by such deficits. It is associated with those aspects of memory that depend on recalling contextual detail.”

In the paper

“For a successful restaurant experience, we need to have access both to our general restaurant scripts and to the episodic memories, the “tags” that differentiate this one from others and allow us to take account of any particular peculiarities (Schank & Abelson, 1977).”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Schank & Abelson, 1977

In the paper

“The distinction between general and specific event representations is not new (see Barsalou, 1988; Neisser, 1986; Nelson, 1988).”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Barsalou, 1988
• Not checked yetcites Neisser, 1986
• Not checked yetcites Nelson, 1988

In the paper

“Recent models consequently stress the role of central executive control in the activation and inhibition of memory components as well as the importance of the current motivations and goal structure of the individual.”

In the paper

“ESK differs from general event and lifetime period representations in that it consists primarily of more concrete sensory–perceptual aspects of unique events, often including visual imagery rather than abstract, conceptual, verbal summaries of past experience.”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Conway and Pleydell-Pearce (2000)

In the paper

“Mnemonic interlock refers to the suggestion that if early truncation of the search process at the intermediate description level is followed by further abortive attempts at retrieval, the conceptual network of intermediate descriptions will become increasingly elaborated.”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Williams, 1996

In the paper

“In each case, ex-patients remained more overgeneral overall, but in each study, responses to positive cues were relatively less overgeneral than responses to negative cues (effect sizes of 0.63 vs. 1.21, 0.72 vs. 1.38, and 0.75 vs. 1.10 for positive vs. negative cues, respectively)”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Mackinger, Loschin, & Leibetseder, 2000
• Not checked yetcites Mackinger, Pachinger, et al., 2000
• Not checked yetcites Williams & Dritschel, 1988

In the paper

“A clear pattern has emerged, showing that various types of trauma are associated with a reduction in specificity of autobiographical memory, making the functional avoidance account of overgeneral memory a plausible one.”

In the paper

“The less specific the participant was, the higher were the scores on a range of avoidance questionnaires. This was demonstrated for a variety of coping behaviors, ranging from social behavioral avoidance (Cognitive Behavioural Avoidance Scale; Ottenbreit & Dobson, 2004) and experiential avoidance (Acceptance and Action Questionnaire; Hayes et al., in press) to thought suppression (White Bear Suppr”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Ottenbreit & Dobson, 2004
• Not checked yetcites Hayes et al., in press
• Not checked yetcites Wegner & Zanakos, 1994

In the paper

“Raes, Hermans, Williams, and Eelen (2006) replicated these results and additionally showed that participants who were low in specificity tended to be high repressors”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Raes, Hermans, Williams, and Eelen (2006)

In the paper

“There is some evidence to suggest that this predominance of conceptual self-relevant information in the early stages of memory search may lead to difficulties with the retrieval of specific memories in two circumstances: first, in individuals who possess highly activated or elaborated repertoires of emotion-related self-representations, and second, in individuals prone to rumination”

In the paper

“a meta-analysis of 14 studies concluded that such patients are overgeneral in their memories following both positive and negative cues, with overgenerality for positive and negative memories being highly intercorrelated (van Vreeswijk & de Wilde, 2004).”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites van Vreeswijk & de Wilde, 2004

In the paper

“If overgeneral memory arises from a “stop” rule introduced at a point in the retrieval search where fragments of unpleasant memories begin to be accessed, then we might expect that such overgenerality would be more likely to be shown in response to negative cues than positive cues.”

In the paper

“We suggest that dysfacilitation as an avoidant coping style is a process that is shaped by contingencies and takes some time to develop.”

In the paper

“Conway and Pleydell-Pearce's (2000) model assumes that generative retrieval (as with all effortful cognitive tasks) requires the use of limited executive resources.”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Conway and Pleydell-Pearce's (2000)

In the paper

“The model suggests that capacity deficits may affect several stages of generative retrieval, including the definition and holding in working memory of a retrieval model, the control processes that inhibit irrelevant autobiographical knowledge during the search (thus avoiding capture errors, addressed in the previous section), and the holding in working memory of a final search result, all of which”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Conway and Pleydell-Pearce's (2000)

In the paper

“Within this framework, as we have seen, a positive cue word could signal to a depressed person the absence of a personally meaningful state and, in turn, activate further rumination.”

In the paper

“Both the overriding of ongoing processing by trauma-related intrusions and any effortful attempts to control such experiences are likely to lead to a diminution of executive resources to apply to other tasks.”

In the paper

“Although reductions in processing capacities may affect all of these subprocesses, failures of inhibitory control are most pronounced.”

In the paper

“Each of the components of the CaR-FA-X account has evidence consistent with it.”

In the paper

“This is perhaps unsurprising, given that traumatized individuals report frequent intrusive thoughts, images, nightmares, and flashbacks regarding their trauma as well as consequent attempts to prevent these experiences using a range of strategies, such as avoidance of trauma reminders (see Dalgleish, 2004).”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Dalgleish, 2004

In the paper

“Thus, categorical memory may represent truncated hierarchical search, exacerbated by capture by conceptual structures. These impairments are themselves compounded by reduced processing resources and by the continuing impact of early trauma and adversity on the self-memory system.”

In the paper

“autobiographical events can also be recollected spontaneously. Such directly retrieved memories are more often specific in nature (Berntsen & Hall, 2004).”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Berntsen & Hall, 2004

In the paper

“Ellis (e.g., Ellis & Ashbrook, 1988), in his resource allocation model of cognitive processing in depression, proposed that the profile of cognitive performance in depressed individuals could be broadly explained by the notion of reduced executive resources.”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Ellis & Ashbrook, 1988

In the paper

“We have also seen that in addition to the difficulty in generative retrieval, some individuals (those who have experienced trauma such as road traffic accidents) are additionally likely to truncate the search process if episodic knowledge tends to evoke highly negative affect. In these cases, stopping short of episodic retrieval is functional (Raes et al., 2003) and is negatively reinforced by the”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Raes et al., 2003

In the paper

“Hertel (e.g., Hertel & Hardin, 1990) expanded on this resource allocation model view and proposed that depressed individuals lacked initiative when performing cognitive tasks, such that performance deficits could be overcome by providing the depressed individuals with information about the optimal way to complete a given task.”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Hertel & Hardin, 1990

In the paper

“Depressed individuals have increased access to conceptual self-relevant information (negative self-schemas such as “I am worthless and inadequate”; Segal, Williams, Teasdale, & Gemar, 1996), and rumination leads to chronic activation of such generalized mental representations (“Why do I have problems other people don't have?”; Nolen-Hoeksema, 1991).”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Segal, Williams, Teasdale, & Gemar, 1996
• Not checked yetcites Nolen-Hoeksema, 1991

In the paper

“First, the effects of trauma on reducing available executive resources (discussed above) will mean that it is more difficult to inhibit interfering cognitive information during the generative retrieval process, thus resulting in that information forming the basis of capture errors.”

In the paper

“Generative retrieval requires processing capacity for both the setting up of a retrieval model and its comparison with retrieved information; it also critically requires the inhibition of irrelevant information to protect against interference.”

In the paper

“In addition, some trauma gives rise to a large number of long-lasting intrusions that reduce available resources for autobiographical memory search, thus further compounding the problem.”

In the paper

“The data suggest that executive resources play an important role in the generative retrieval of specific autobiographical memories and that deficient resources reduce the amount of cognitive control that is possible.”

In the paper

“Finally, Zacks and Hasher (1994) proposed that depressed individuals have difficulties inhibiting interfering cognitive material when seeking to perform cognitive tasks.”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Zacks and Hasher (1994)

In the paper

“Reduced executive capacity and diminished cognitive control will therefore compound a tendency to become captured by abstract conceptual self-representations and will diminish strategic task-oriented processing.”

In the paper

“In summary, a history of trauma may lead to overgenerality not only because of passive avoidance of emotion-related ESK but because intrusion of traumatic information reduces available executive resources.”

In the paper

“Second, the experience of trauma is itself likely to lead to relatively accessible negative self-schemas (Dalgleish, 2004; Ehlers & Clark, 2000). Such schemas will also “capture” cognitive processing during generative retrieval in particular autobiographical domains, leading to overgeneral responses as capture errors.”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Dalgleish, 2004
• Not checked yetcites Ehlers & Clark, 2000

In the paper

“In particular, we show that trauma may affect (a) executive capacity, (b) the probability of capture errors, and (c) depression.”

In the paper

“In the light of these overlaps both in clinical phenomenology and in underlying mechanisms, we suggest that all three mechanisms are likely to contribute both to overgenerality in autobiographical memory and, independently, to those aspects of cognitive functioning that have been found to be affected by such overgenerality (problem solving, imagining the future, and persistence of emotional”

In the paper

“We have seen that there are a number of methodological issues that limit the conclusions that can be made from many of the studies taken individually.”

In the paper

“This is clearly important, as the ability to anticipate potential impending events and experiences is critical for the day-to-day planning of activities (Ajzen, 1998).”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Ajzen, 1998

In the paper

“However, because these studies are correlational, it remains possible that both specificity of autobiographical memories and quality of problem-solving performance might be determined by third factors. For example, Watkins and Baracaia (2002) have found that rumination impairs problem solving in depression, and so the apparent effect of overgeneral memory on problem solving may be mediated by rum”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Watkins and Baracaia (2002)

In the paper

“Taken together, these studies provide relatively strong evidence that overgeneral memory, along with other variables, is an important causal factor in maintaining depression and that modifying it may have beneficial consequences.”

In the paper

“The phenomenon of overgeneral memory ranks alongside other memory deficits known for many years to be associated with depression but goes beyond these in several ways.”

In the paper

“Nonetheless, the MEPS is a well-established measure of social problem solving that reliably discriminates between groups that have been determined to differ in actual real-life problem solving (e.g., depressed patients vs. controls; Marx, Williams, & Claridge, 1992).”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Marx, Williams, & Claridge, 1992

In the paper

“This phenomenon is a reliable feature of these diagnostic groups and can be found in other (though not all) emotional disorders.”

In the paper

“In summary, capture errors may occur whenever information needed for the memory search matches information that is self-schematic. Whenever individuals then ruminate about what has happened to them, reduced capacity/control will reduce the ability to inhibit further task-irrelevant information.”