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Memory category fluency, memory specificity, and the fading affect bias for positive and negative autobiographical events: Performance on a good day–bad day task in healthy and depressed individuals
- Source :
- Journal of Experimental Psychology. General
- Publication Year :
- 2020
- Publisher :
- American Psychological Association (APA), 2020.
-
Abstract
- In mentally healthy individuals, autobiographical memory is typically biased toward positive events, which may help to maintain psychological well-being. Our aim was to assess a range of important positive memory biases in the mentally healthy and explore the possibility that these biases are mitigated in those with mental health problems. We administered a novel recall paradigm that required recollection of multiple good and bad past events (the Good Day–Bad Day task) to healthy and depressed individuals. This allowed us to explore differences in memory category fluency (i.e., the ability to generate integrated sets of associated events) for positive and negative memories, along with memory specificity, and fading affect bias—a greater reduction in the intensity of memory-related affect over time for negative versus positive events. We found that healthy participants demonstrated superior category fluency for positive relative to negative events but that this effect was absent in depressed participants. Healthy participants exhibited a strong fading affect bias that was significantly mitigated, although still present, in depression. Finally, memory specificity was reduced in depression for both positive and negative memories. Findings demonstrate that the positive bias associated with mental health is maintained by multiple autobiographical memory processes and that depression is as much a function of the absence of these positive biases as it is the presence of negative biases. Results provide important guidance for developing new treatments for improving mental health. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)
- Subjects :
- Adult
Male
Memory, Episodic
Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Affect (psychology)
050105 experimental psychology
Fluency
Developmental Neuroscience
Humans
Verbal fluency test
0501 psychology and cognitive sciences
General Psychology
Depressive Disorder
Recall
Autobiographical memory
autobiographical memory
05 social sciences
positive bias
Mental health
Cognitive bias
Fading affect bias
Affect
depression
Mental Recall
Brief Reports
Female
Psychology
mental health
psychological phenomena and processes
Clinical psychology
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 19392222 and 00963445
- Volume :
- 149
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....a111b3b326ddae126c29d9d185d07992