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Considering the higher prevalence of depression in women than in men, the study of the variables that underlie this gender difference becomes important for both the prevention and the treatment of depression. This study explores gender differences in the relationship between depressive symptoms, rumination, repressive coping, and overgeneral autobiographical memory (OGM) in a nonclinical population. There are 141 men and 148 women who completed the measures of depression, rumination, and repression, and the Autobiographical Memory Test to assess OGM. Women remembered a higher number of specific memories than men. Most importantly, results showed a different pattern of association between rumination, repression, depression, and OGM by gender. Depressive symptoms were associated with repressive coping and OGM in women. However, depressive symptomatology was related to repressive coping but not to OGM in men. These results suggest that the role of OGM in depression may be less important in men than in women. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to compare the performance in the Autobiographical Memory Test in older adults with high scores on depression symptoms (HDS) compared with a matched group with low scores on depression symptoms (LDS) according to the clinical cut-off of the Centre for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale. Participants were asked to generate specific autobiographical memories in response to a series of positive and negative cue words. Latencies of responses for each item were also scored. LDS participants showed a higher proportion of specific memories than HDS participants. Latencies of responses to positive and negative cues were greater for HDS than LDS. Specific autobiographical memory was positively associated with Life Satisfaction. Cognitive emotional changes in the function of memory with age are suggested as a possible explanation for the findings. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: People with schizophrenia have difficulty recalling specific autobiographical events from their past. However, the nature of this difficulty (e.g., whether these problems are only for memories that are negative or positive) and the mechanisms associated with it remain poorly understood. Methods: The present investigation asked patients with schizophrenia (n = 91) and healthy controls (n = 109) to recall memories related to several positive and negative cue words. Participants also completed self‐report measures of rumination and depressive symptoms and a measure of verbal fluency to assess executive functioning. Participants' memories were coded for specificity (whether or not they referred to a specific event lasting <24 hr) and valence (positive vs. negative). Results: Patients recalled fewer specific memories than controls and they showed particular difficulty recalling specific negative memories cued by negative words. For healthy controls, impoverished verbal fluency was associated with recall of fewer specific memories and particularly recall of fewer positive specific memories. These variables were unrelated to specificity amongst patients. Rumination was not associated with specificity in either group. Conclusions: These findings are discussed with reference to other mechanisms that might contribute towards reduced specificity in schizophrenia, such as the tendency to avoid negative affect, and the implications of this for interventions for schizophrenia and memory specificity problems. Practitioner points: The experience of schizophrenia is associated with problems recalling specific events from one's past.In particular, patients have difficulty recalling specific negative memories from their past.These memory problems are independent of executive functioning difficulties, ruminative tendencies, and also depression symptoms.Interventions for memory problems in schizophrenia must target the difficulty people have in recalling specific negative events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sleep is a support for cognitive development in childhood. Most of the studies in the field have focused on school‐age children and sleep problems, but less research focuses on the relation between the normative course of sleep and executive functions in preschoolers. Thus, the aim of the present study was to analyze the association between nighttime sleep duration and executive functioning in a 158 non‐clinical sample of Spanish participants (Mage = 56.35 months, SD = 11.24; ages 38–78 months; 48.1% girls). Sleep habits were measured by parents' self‐reports; Shape School task was applied to assess inhibition and cognitive flexibility; Word Span task was used to assess working memory; and Vocabulary subtest from the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence‐III was used to assess verbal ability. The findings revealed that the relation between sleep and executive functioning was only significant in the cases of inhibition and working memory. Further, age and verbal ability were related and were predictors of inhibition, working memory, and cognitive flexibility. We consider it necessary to continue researching in this area given the importance of forming a correct sleep habit during the preschool age and its impact on health, cognition, and well‐being in childhood. In short, our results represent the first approach to the subject under study, which should be completed with objective sleep measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: The ability to think about future events serves a range of important functions. People with schizophrenia show impairments in future thinking. However, whether these impairments are specific to positive or negative events and to what extent they are associated with impairments in verbal fluency and autobiographical memory remains poorly understood. Methods: People with schizophrenia (n = 93) and people without psychiatric diagnoses (n = 111) were asked to generate future events and retrieve past autobiographical events and they also completed a test of verbal fluency. Participants also completed questionnaire measures of the positive and negative dimensions of schizophrenia and depression symptoms. Results: People with schizophrenia generated significantly fewer positive and negative future events than controls. In a linear regression, the interaction between diagnosis and autobiographical memory retrieval explained a significant amount of variance in the number of future events that participants generated even when accounting for symptoms and verbal fluency. Past and future thinking abilities were correlated in controls but not in people with schizophrenia. Conclusions: People with schizophrenia may not rely on autobiographical content to imagine the future and may rely instead on semantic processes. Interventions that improve past and future thinking amongst people with schizophrenia are warranted. Practitioner points: Compared to control participants, people with schizophrenia have marked difficulty generating possible, positive and negative, future events.Unlike controls, for people with schizophrenia there is no relation between their ability to remember past events and their ability to think about the future.People with schizophrenia may have difficulty using their memories for their past to imagine and simulate possible future events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses depression in old age as of March 2013, with a focus on major depressive disorder (MDD) and its effects on executive functioning in elderly populations. Topics include neuropsychological performance and cognitive ability, mild cognitive impairment, and depressive symptomatology.