A test of the functional avoidance hypothesis in the development of overgeneral autobiographical memory

Overgeneral memory (OGM) refers to the failure to recall memories of specific personally experienced events, which occurs in various psychiatric disorders. One pathway through which OGM is theorized to develop is the avoidance of thinking of negative experiences, whereby cumulative avoidance may maladaptively generalize to autobiographical memory (AM) more broadly. We tested this, predicting that negative experiences would interact with avoidance to predict AM specificity. In Study 1 (N = 281), negative life events (over six months) and daily hassles (over one month) were not related to AM specificity, nor was avoidance, and no interaction was found. In Study 2 (N = 318), we revised our measurements and used an increased timeframe of 12 months for both negative life events and daily hassles. The results showed no interaction effect for negative life events, but they did show an interaction for daily hassles, whereby increased hassles and higher avoidance of thinking about them were associated with reduced AM specificity, independent of general cognitive avoidance and depressive symptoms. No evidence was found that cognitive avoidance or AM specificity moderated the effect of negative experiences on depressive symptoms. Our findings suggest that life events over 6–12 months are not associated with AM specificity, but chronic daily hassles over 12 months predict reduced AM specificity when individuals avoid thinking about them. The findings provide evidence for the functional-avoidance hypothesis of OGM development and future directions for longitudinal studies.     

Context-dependent activation of reduced autobiographical memory specificity as an avoidant coping style

According to the affect-regulation hypothesis (Williams et al., 2007), reduced autobiographical memory specificity (rAMS) or overgeneral memory (OGM) might be considered a cognitive avoidance strategy; that is, people learn to avoid the emotionally painful consequences associated with the retrieval of specific negative memories. Based on this hypothesis, one would predict significant negative associations between AMS and avoidant coping. However, studies investigating this prediction have led to equivocal results. In the present study we tested a possible explanation for these contradictory findings. It was hypothesized that rAMS (in part) reflects an avoidant coping strategy, which might only become apparent under certain conditions, that is, conditions that signal the possibility of 'danger.' To test this hypothesis, we assessed AMS and behavioral avoidance but experimentally manipulated the instructions. In the neutral condition, two parallel versions of the Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT) were presented under neutral instructions. In the threat condition, the first AMT was presented under neutral instructions, while the second AMT was presented under 'threat instructions.' Results showed no significant correlations between avoidance and OGM under neutral conditions but significant and markedly stronger correlations under threat conditions, with more avoidance being associated with fewer specific and more categoric memories. In addition, high avoiders showed a stronger reduction in AMS in the threat condition as compared with the neutral condition, while low avoiders showed no such difference between conditions. The data confirm that OGM can be considered as part of a broader avoidant coping style. However, more importantly, they show that, at least in nonclinical individuals, the activation of this coping style may depend on the context.     

Effect of self-discrepancy on specificity of autobiographical memory retrieval

Research using a cue word paradigm has consistently shown that depression, in both adults and adolescents, is associated with difficulties in retrieving specific autobiographical memories. Inspired by previous work stating that depressed feelings are related to a perceived discrepancy between attributes of the actual and the ideal self, the present study aimed to investigate the hypothesis that cues bringing discrepancies between the actual and ideal selves to the foreground might promote or facilitate the recall of overgeneral (instead of specific) autobiographical memories. In two studies adolescents provided autobiographical memories in response to 10 high-discrepant and 10 low-discrepant words. As predicted, results in both studies showed an effect of cue word discrepancy on the specificity of autobiographical memories such that participants retrieved a smaller proportion of specific and a greater proportion of overgeneral memories in response to high-discrepant words as compared to low-discrepant words. The findings are discussed in terms of the self-memory system (SMS) as a conceptual framework of autobiographical memory (Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000).     

“Food for Memory”: Pictorial Food-Related Memory Bias and the Role of Thought Suppression in High and Low Restrained Eaters

The Psychological Record - Building on cognitive theory, the present study is the first to test whether high restrained eaters show an immediate and delayed memory bias for pictorial food cues and...     

The computerized scoring algorithm for the autobiographical memory test: updates and extensions for analyzing memories of English-speaking adults

ABSTRACT

The Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT) has been central in psychopathological studies of memory dysfunctions, as reduced memory specificity or overgeneralised autobiographical memory has been recognised as a hallmark vulnerability for depression. In the AMT, participants are asked to generate specific memories in response to emotional cue words, and their responses are scored by human experts. Because the manual coding takes some time, particularly when analysing a large dataset, recent studies have proposed computerised scoring algorithms. These algorithms have been shown to reliably discriminate between specific and non-specific memories of English-speaking children and Dutch- and Japanese-speaking adults. The key limitation is that the algorithm is not developed for English-speaking adult memories, which may cover a wider range of vocabulary that the existing algorithm for English-speaking child memories cannot process correctly. In the present study, we trained a new support vector machine to score memories of English-speaking adults. In a performance test (predicting memory specificity against human expert coding), the adult-memory algorithm outperformed the child-memory variant. In another independent performance test, the adult-memory algorithm showed robust performances to score memories that were generated in response to a different set of cues. These results suggest that the adult-memory algorithm reliably scores memory specificity.     

An item response theory/confirmatory factor analysis of the Autobiographical Memory Test

The Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT) is used to assess the degree of specificity of autobiographical memory. The AMT usually contains cue words of both positive and negative valence, but it is unclear whether these valences form separate factors or not. Accordingly, confirmatory factor analysis assessed whether the AMT measures one overall factor, or whether different cue types are related to different factors. Results were consistent across three datasets (N = 333, N = 405, and N = 336). A one-factor model fitted each dataset well, which suggests that responses to positive and negative cues are related to the one construct. In addition, item response theory analyses showed that the AMT is most precise for people who score low on memory specificity. Implications for using the AMT with high-functioning samples are discussed.     

Reduced autobiographical memory specificity and affect regulation

The effect of specificity of autobiographical memory (AM) retrieval on the affective impact of an emotional event was examined. In Study 1 (N = 90) the impact of a negative and positive experience was compared between student participants who habitually retrieve autobiographical memories (AMs) in a specific way and participants who generally retrieve less specific memories. In Study 2 (N = 48) the effect of an experimentally induced (specific vs. overgeneral) retrieval style on the impact of a negative experience was studied in student participants who habitually retrieve less specific memories. Study 1 replicated the finding of Raes, Hermans, de Decker, Eelen, & Williams (2003 Raes, F, Hermans, D, de Decker, A, Eelen, P and Williams, JMG. (2003). Autobiographical memory specificity and affect regulation: An experimental approach. Emotion, 3: 201–206. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) that a negative event leads to less subjective distress in low‐specific participants as compared with high‐specific participants. However, both groups did not differ in their affective reaction to a positive event. Important, reduced memory specificity was associated with “repressive coping”, providing further evidence for the idea that reduced memory specificity is used as an avoidant or repressive‐defensive mechanism to regulate negative affect (Williams, 1996 Williams JMG (1996) Depression and the specificity of autobiographical memory In D. C. Rubin (Ed.) Remembering our past. Studies in autobiographical memory (pp. 244–267) Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). In Study 2, participants who were induced to retrieve memories in an overgeneral way experienced more distress following a negative event as compared with participants who were induced to retrieve memories in a specific way. Results are discussed in the context of recent findings concerning AM specificity and emotion regulation (Philippot, Schaefer, & Herbette, 2003 Philippot, P, Schaefer, A and Herbette, G. (2003). Consequences of specific processing of emotional information: Impact of general versus specific autobiographical memory priming on emotion elicitation. Emotion, 3: 270–283. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Directions for further research are suggested.     

Fear expression and return of fear following threat instruction with or without direct contingency experience

Prior research showed that mere instructions about the contingency between a conditioned stimulus (CS) and an unconditioned stimulus (US) can generate fear reactions to the CS. Little is known, however, about the extent to which actual CS–US contingency experience adds anything beyond the effect of contingency instructions. Our results extend previous studies on this topic in that it included fear potentiated startle as an additional dependent variable and examined return of fear (ROF) following reinstatement. We observed that CS–US pairings can enhance fear reactions beyond the effect of contingency instructions. Moreover, for all measures of fear, instructions elicited immediate fear reactions that could not be completely overridden by subsequent situational safety information. Finally, ROF following reinstatement for instructed CS+s was unaffected by actual experience. In summary, our results demonstrate the power of contingency instructions and reveal the additional impact of actual experience of CS–US pairings.     

Overgeneral autobiographical memory predicts higher prospective levels of depressive symptoms and intrusions in borderline patients

Overgeneral memory (OGM), the tendency to retrieve categories of events from autobiographical memory instead of single events, is found to be a reliable predictor for future mood disturbances and post-traumatic symptom severity. Patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) often report co-morbid episodes of major depressive disorder (MDD) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Therefore, we investigated whether OGM would predict depression severity and (post-traumatic) stress symptoms in BPD patients. At admission (N?=?54) and at six-month follow-up (N?≥?31), BPD patients completed the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Disorders, the Assessment of DSM-IV Personality Disorders, the Autobiographical Memory Test, the Beck Depression Inventory—2nd edition (BDI-II), and the Impact of Event Scale. OGM at baseline predicted (a) higher levels of depressive symptoms at follow-up and (b) more intrusions related to a stressful event over and above baseline levels of borderline symptoms, depressive symptoms, and intrusions, respectively. No association was found between memory specificity and event-related avoidance at follow-up. Despite previous findings suggesting that OGM in BPD is less robust than in MDD and PTSD, our results suggest that memory specificity in BPD patients may have some relevance for the course of depressive and stress symptomatology in BPD.     

Does contingency awareness mediate the influence of emotional learning on the cueing of visual attention?

Previous research has indicated that conditioning depends on contingency awareness (CA). However, we argue that these studies have examined this issue under methodological conditions that might be insensitive to associative learning without CA. In the present study we examined the effect of an experimental manipulation of CA on attentive processing of classically conditioned stimuli, which is sensitive to associative learning with and without CA. We found that aversive conditioning with additional contingency instructions modulated visual attention, in the sense that the conditioned cues captured and held attention more strongly than the non-conditioned cues. Surprisingly, conditioning under conditions of restricted CA yielded a response pattern that was different from that under full CA. These findings suggest that conditioning with full and restricted CA can lead to qualitatively different effects on attention.