Impact of current grief on memory for past grief in spousal bereavement

This study examined the impact of changes in level of current grief over time on changes in memory for past grief. Following from previous work on the impact of current affective state on memory for past affectively salient events, bereaved individuals who underwent a greater reduction in grief over time were expected to show a similar pattern of changes in memory for past grief. A sample of conjugally bereaved participants completed measures of current grief and memory for past grief at the time of the loss of their spouse at each of the 2, 6, 13, and 30 month post-loss time periods. As predicted, those who reported greater reduction in grief over the course of the study were more likely to remember their past grief as progressively less severe relative to those who underwent less reduction in grief over time. A nonrecursive causal model analysis verified that changes in memory for past grief were explained by changes in current grief. These results were discussed in terms of contemporary reconstructive memory accounts of the effect of affective state on memory.     

The effects of late-life spousal bereavement over a 30-month interval

Self-report measures of grief, depression, and general psychopathology were studied in widows and widowers over a 2.5-year period following death of their partner. A comparison sample of men and women was also followed for the same period. Differences in severity of depression and psychopathology previously reported at 2 months postloss (Gallagher, Breckenridge, Thompson, & Peterson, 1983) diminished to nonsignificant levels at 12 and 30 months. However, significant differences between bereaved and comparison subjects on measures of grief were still apparent 30 months after spousal loss. A main effect of gender for depression and psychopathology (but not for grief) was found at 2 and 12 months: Women reported more distress than men regardless of bereavement status. Results indicate that the experience of grief persists for at least 30 months in both older men and women who have lost their spouse.     

Investigation of a developmental model of risk for depression and suicidality following spousal bereavement

Data from a community-based multi-wave investigation were used to examine a developmental model of risk for depression and suicidality following the death of a spouse. Measures of perceived parental affection and control during childhood were administered to 218 widowed adults 11 months after the death of the spouse. Self-esteem, spousal dependency, depression, and suicidality were assessed 9 months later. Dependency on the deceased spouse mediated a significant association between retrospectively reported parental control during childhood and post-loss depressive symptoms. Depressive symptoms mediated significant associations of dependency on the deceased spouse and low self-esteem with suicidal ideation and behavior.     

Guilt in bereavement: Its relationship with complicated grief and depression

This study investigated the relationship between guilt and well‐being of bereaved persons, and explored potential differences in the associations between guilt‐complicated grief (CG) and guilt‐depression. In total, 1358 Chinese bereaved adults were recruited to fill out questionnaires. Participants (N = 194) who had been bereaved within 2 years of the first survey, filled out the same questionnaires 1 year later. Higher guilt was associated with higher degrees of both CG and depression. The level of guilt predicted CG and depression symptoms 1 year later. Bereavement‐related guilt has a closer association with CG than depression. Responsibility guilt, indebtedness guilt and degree of guilt feeling are more prominent aspects of guilt in CG than in depression. These findings demonstrate the significant role of guilt (perhaps a core symptom) in mental health of the bereaved, having implications for identifying persons with grief complications and depression.     

Impaired autobiographical memory in complicated grief

This study investigated the relationship between autobiographical memory and goals in complicated grief (CG). Twenty-four individuals with CG and 21 bereaved individuals without CG completed an autobiographical memory task and a personal goals task. CG participants were more likely to recall memories related to their loss, particularly in response to negative cues. There was a positive relationship between the proportion of loss-related memories recalled and the proportion of grief-related goals held by individuals after controlling for symptom level. Individuals with CG also showed impaired retrieval of specific autobiographical memories in response to both positive and negative cues. These results suggest that CG is characterised by impaired and biased retrieval of specific autobiographical memories. These patterns are consistent with propositions stemming from the self-memory models of autobiographical memory.     

Suicidality and bereavement: complicated grief as psychiatric disorder presenting greatest risk for suicidality

The influence of complicated grief (CG) on suicidality among bereaved adults was examined. The Yale Evaluation of Suicidality scale and the Inventory of Complicated Grief-Revised were administered to 309 bereaved adults in face-to-face interviews conducted at baseline (6.2 months post-loss) and at follow-up (10.8 months post-loss). Cross-sectionally, CG was associated with a 6.58 (95% CI: 1.74-18.0) times greater likelihood of "high suicidality" at baseline, and an 11.30 (95% CI: 3.33-38.10) times greater risk of high suicidality at follow-up, after controlling for gender, race, major depressive disorder (MDD), posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and social support. Longitudinally, CG at baseline was associated with an 8.21 (95% CI: 2.49-27.0) times greater likelihood of high suicidality at follow-up, controlling for the above confounders. The study results indicate that CG substantially heightened the risk of suicidality after controlling for important confounders such as MDD and PTSD, suggesting that CG poses an independent psychiatric risk for suicidal thoughts and actions.     

Enacting memory and grief in poetic landscapes

Much geographical work has focused on sites of memory, where memories and grief are inherently tied to particular places, monuments and landscapes. Memories and grief can also, however, be spatially and temporally dispersed and fragmentary, creating landscapes in which things are simultaneously present and absent. In this paper I trace the creation of a memorial poem - a marwnad - for my great aunt, who lived her entire life on the margins of Cors Goch, a lowland bog in rural south-west Wales, as part of a long tradition in Welsh-language poetry. Like many Welsh marwnadau, the poem highlights spatial and temporal complexities of memory, emotion and grief. They are both inherently tied to shifting, ephemeral, fluid landscapes and politicised in changing regional and national cultural landscapes, speaking to challenges faced by rural communities and the changing geographies of the Welsh language. As well as reflecting the temporality and seasonality of site-specific memory and grief, the poem contributes to that temporality as memories resurface and intensify during composition and in subsequent personal readings. I discuss the place of such performative poetry in mapping grief and the implications of poetic grieving and memory-making for absence and presence and relationships with the landscape.     

Exaggerating current and past performance: motivated self-enhancement versus reconstructive memory

The authors propose distinct reasons why individuals exaggerate their current and past performance. Current performance is of motivational and self-evaluative significance, and exaggerations of current performance often stem from motivated self-enhancement concerns. Self-reports of past performance are influenced less by motivated self-enhancement, instead reflecting more subtle biases in reconstructive memory. For students currently in college, grade point averages (GPAs) reflect a currently important goal pursuit, whereas Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores reflect a goal that was important in the past. Study 1 demonstrated that dispositional self-enhancement predicted greater GPA (but not SAT) exaggeration, whereas advanced class standing predicted greater SAT (but not GPA) exaggeration. Study 2 demonstrated that a self-affirmation manipulation attenuated the association between dispositional self-enhancement and GPA exaggeration but not the association between class standing and SAT exaggeration. The distinction between motivated self-enhancement and reconstructive memory bias has important implications for the broader literature on self-evaluation.     

Retrospective assessment of marital adjustment and depression during the first 2 years of spousal bereavement

Two hundred twelve bereaved elders rated marital adjustment using items drawn from the Locke and Wallace (1959) Marital Adjustment Test and completed the Beck Depression Inventory 2 months, 12 months, and 30 months after the loss of their spouses. Their responses were compared with those of 162 nonbereaved individuals of comparable age who were tested at the same times. More positive ratings of marital adjustment were made by bereaved subjects than by nonbereaved subjects. Among nonbereaved elders, more severe ratings of depression were associated with lower ratings of marital adjustment. In the bereaved sample, however, the opposite was found: More severe ratings of depression were associated with higher ratings of marital adjustment. This pattern of results changed only slightly over the 2.5-year course of bereavement and was not influenced by gender. These results are discussed in terms of cognitive processes (e.g., idealization) that influence retrospective assessments of marital adjustment during bereavement.     

How do loss- and restoration-oriented coping change across time? A prospective study on adjustment following spousal bereavement

Background and objectives: According to the Dual Process Model (DPM), shifting between loss-oriented (LO) and restoration-oriented (RO) coping is essential for adjustment following bereavement. Knowledge about how LO and RO coping change over time and how such changes are related to adjustment is missing. With a prospective design this study investigated (1) relations between levels of LO/RO coping and selected outcomes and (2) changes in LO/RO coping across time and their relations to adjustment.

Methods: A sample of 145 spousal bereaved individuals completed questionnaires measuring LO and RO coping, grief symptoms, positive affect, and attachment orientation approximately 2–3 months (baseline) and 7 months (follow-up) post-loss.

Results: High usage of LO coping was associated with poorer outcomes and high usage of RO coping was associated with better outcomes at both baseline and follow-up. Individuals generally shifted towards more RO coping across time and those who exhibited this shift showed lower levels of grief at follow-up compared to individuals who changed towards more LO coping across time.

Conclusions: Individuals showing more RO coping reported better adjustment both early and later in the bereavement process. Changes in coping orientation over time might be useful for understanding complicated grief reactions following loss.     

The time course of grief reactions to spousal loss: evidence from a national probability sample

Most studies of widowhood have focused on reactions during the first few years postloss. The authors investigated whether widowhood had more enduring effects using a nationally representative U.S. sample. Participants were 768 individuals who had lost their spouse (from a few months to 64 years) prior to data collection. Results indicated that the widowed continued to talk, think, and feel emotions about their lost spouse decades later. Twenty years postloss, the widowed thought about their spouse once every week or 2 and had a conversation about their spouse once a month on average. About 12.6 years postloss, the widowed reported feeling upset between sometimes and rarely when they thought about their spouse. These findings add to an understanding of the time course of grief.     

The role of free choice in memory for past decisions

After choosing between different options, people tend to remember the features of the options in ways that favour the chosen alternative. The present experiment examined how limitations on freedom to choose between options affected this memory bias. Participants were given a series of two-option choices and were either allowed free choice between options or were assigned to an option. Participants assigned to an option were led to believe that either the selection was random or was made in their best interest based on their personality profile. Results indicated that the choice and best interest conditions demonstrated memory attributions that favoured their received options, whereas the assignment condition did not. These findings support the view that memory biases towards received options are not unique to free choice situations, but may stem from expectations and implicit theories about how and why the choice was made.     

The role of free choice in memory for past decisions

After choosing between different options, people tend to remember the features of the options in ways that favour the chosen alternative. The present experiment examined how limitations on freedom to choose between options affected this memory bias. Participants were given a series of two-option choices and were either allowed free choice between options or were assigned to an option. Participants assigned to an option were led to believe that either the selection was random or was made in their best interest based on their personality profile. Results indicated that the choice and best interest conditions demonstrated memory attributions that favoured their received options, whereas the assignment condition did not. These findings support the view that memory biases towards received options are not unique to free choice situations, but may stem from expectations and implicit theories about how and why the choice was made.     

Prospective memory for future intentions: Some comparisons with memory for past events

Abstract

Memory for future intentions was compared with memory for past activities by asking members of a film society to retrieve names of films they intended to see later on in a Season and films they had seen earlier. Memory for films that had been seen showed the usual recency effect, while retrieval of films to be seen showed an analogous proximity effect in that films to be seen sooner were more accessible. It was also found that recall of past films was inversely related to the total number of such films, but was unrelated to the average time interval since they were seen. In a similar fashion, retrievability of future films was inversely related to the total number of such films and was unrelated to when they were to be seen. There was a small but significant correlation between an individual's ability to retrieve the names of past and future films. Taken together, these correspondences suggest that similar empirical laws may govern the retrieval of stored information about past events and future intentions. Possible interpretations of the proximity effect and its theoretical implications are discussed.     

Evaluations of hypothetical bereavement and grief: The influence of loss recency,loss type and gender

Individuals often hold strict and erroneous expectations for how others should grieve, yet this issue has been sparsely researched. A total of 161 undergraduates rated the appropriateness of various social and emotional behaviours of a hypothetical bereaved individual as a function of the recency of the death (1 month or 1 year ago), the nature of the loss (death of a spouse or child) and the gender of the bereaved. As expected, subjects deemed it inappropriate to show positive emotions and experiences 1 month after a hypothetical death and more inappropriate to show negative reactions 1 year later and there were generally higher expectations of socially appropriate behaviour for those who lost a child rather than a spouse. Unexpectedly, there were no significant differences regarding the gender of the bereaved. This study is among the first to show experimentally the widespread expectation that grief should be experienced early and be short‐lived.     

Impact of spousal work restrictions on expatriates' work life and overall life satisfaction

Our understanding of the challenges and the broader role of spouses of expatriates is extremely limited. This study examined the impact of spousal work restrictions on expatriates' work life and overall life satisfaction using qualitative and quantitative analyses based on data from a sample of 409 Indian Information Technology professionals working in USA. Furthermore, hypothesised conditional process model (tested with PROCESS analysis tool) was supported, showing that spousal work restrictions created complications in personal lives of expatriates, which interfered with work lives resulting in lower overall life satisfaction. We identified six core classes of challenges faced by spouses of expatriates: wasted skills, financial issues, boredom, social isolation, quality time and domestic tension. Our mixed method approach also helps to provide a more comprehensive picture of these complications. This study may help organisational leaders and policy makers to more fully consider the implications of visa-related policy changes on expatriate families.     

When remembering the past suppresses memory for future actions

Remembering planned actions at the correct time in the future is an integral component of prospective cognition. Recent studies on future remembering have led to suggestions that prospective cognition might be based on past experience. To test this hypothesis, we focused on retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF), which usually indicates that remembering past events suppresses memory for related but different past events. The current study assessed RIF in two kinds of event-based prospective memory (PM) tasks using either focal or non-focal cues for ongoing tasks. Participants studied six members from each of eight taxonomic categories and then practiced recalling three of the six members from four of the eight categories using category-stem cues. This retrieval practice suppressed the detection of non-practiced members of the practiced categories during the PM task with non-focal cues (Experiment 1) but not with focal cues (Experiment 2). The results suggest that recall of certain items inhibits the function of the others as PM cues, but only if the PM task does not largely share its processing with the ongoing task.     

Variations of the past. Reflections on memory in contemporary psychoanalysis

In Jewish thought, contradictory positions may be legitimate. This is seen in Freud´s position in relation to tradition and memory: remembrance is valuable, but so is a movement forward. The main claim of this paper is that psychoanalysis in this respect has changed. While in especially the early Freudian position, one could see a stress on the importance of going back to earlier times, object relation theory mainly stresses the importance of facilitating new functions. This change has been especially clear during the last two decades. As cases of example, the use of neurocognitive models in psychoanalysis as well as Fonagy’s theory are discussed. The consequences of the shift from a bidirectional to a unidirectional, forward-looking, psychoanalysis, are discussed.     

Working memory involved in predicting future outcomes based on past experiences

Deficits in working memory have been shown to contribute to poor performance on the Iowa Gambling Task [IGT: Bechara, A., &; Martin, E.M. (2004). Impaired decision making related to working memory deficits in individuals with substance addictions. Neuropsychology, 18, 152–162]. Similarly, a secondary memory load task has been shown to impair task performance [Hinson, J., Jameson, T. &; Whitney, P. (2002). Somatic markers, working memory, and decision making. Cognitive, Affective, &; Behavioural Neuroscience, 2, 341–353]. In the present study, we investigate whether the latter findings were due to increased random responding [Franco-Watkins, A. M., Pashler, H., &; Rickard, T. C. (2006). Does working memory load lead to greater impulsivity? Commentary on Hinson, Jameson, and Whitney’s (2003). Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory &; Cognition, 32, 443–447]. Participants were tested under Low Working Memory (LWM; n = 18) or High Working Memory (HWM; n = 17) conditions while performing the Reversed IGT in which punishment was immediate and reward delayed [Bechara, A., Dolan, S., &; Hindes, A. (2002). Decision making and addiction (part II): Myopia for the future or hypersensitivity to reward? Neuropsychologia, 40, 1690–1705]. In support of a role for working memory in emotional decision making, compared to the LWM condition, participants in the HWM condition made significantly greater number of disadvantageous selections than that predicted by chance. Performance by the HWM group could not be fully explained by random responding.