Investigation of mood-congruent false and true memory recognition in depression.
The present study investigated the extent of mood-congruent false and true memory recognition in depression. A group of 25 patients with depression and 28 healthy controls completed a variant of the Deese-Roediger McDermott task. Four lists were read to participants in sequence, followed by a recognition task. The words in each list were associated with a central but unmentioned theme word that was either depression-relevant (i.e., loneliness), delusion-relevant (betrayal), positive (holidays), or neutral (window). Whereas it was expected to replicate the conventional mood-congruent effect in depression (better recognition of depression-relevant items), the available literature did not allow strong predictions to be made on the extent of mood-congruent false recognition in depression. Results showed that depressed patients learned emotionally charged material equally well as healthy participants but forgot significantly more neutral material. A conventional mood-congruent memory bias was not found, but relative to healthy controls, patients with depression committed more false recognition errors for emotionally charged words, particularly for depression-relevant items. The results confirm that depressed patients are biased toward emotional material. Reasons for the absence of the expected mood-congruent memory bias are discussed. It is suggested that researchers as well as clinicians should pay more attention to mood-congruent false recollection, because it may undermine the validity of autobiographic reports in depressive patients and may represent a maintenance factor for the disorder.
Moritz
Steffen
S
Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Hospital Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany. moritz@uke.uni-hamburg.de
Gläscher
Jan
J
Brassen
Stefanie
S
D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D000367:Age Factors; D003863:Depression / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008569:Memory Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology*; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D012094:Repression, Psychology; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D014825:Vocabulary