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Autobiographical memory and hierarchical search strategies in depressed and non-depressed participants

BACKGROUND: There is a growing body of literature showing individuals with depression and other trauma-related disorders (e.g., posttraumatic stress disorder) recall more overgeneral and less specific autobiographical memories compared to normal participants. Although the mechanisms underlying overg...

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Autores principales: Haque, Shamsul, Juliana, Eka, Khan, Rahmattullah, Hasking, Penelope
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4240842/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25403551
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12888-014-0310-z
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author Haque, Shamsul
Juliana, Eka
Khan, Rahmattullah
Hasking, Penelope
author_facet Haque, Shamsul
Juliana, Eka
Khan, Rahmattullah
Hasking, Penelope
author_sort Haque, Shamsul
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: There is a growing body of literature showing individuals with depression and other trauma-related disorders (e.g., posttraumatic stress disorder) recall more overgeneral and less specific autobiographical memories compared to normal participants. Although the mechanisms underlying overgeneral memory are quite clear, the search strategy operated within the autobiographical knowledge base, at time of recollection, requires further exploration. The current study aimed to examine the hierarchical search sequence used to recall autobiographical memories in depressed and non-depressed participants, with a view to determining whether depressed participants exhibited truncated search strategies. METHODS: Thirteen depressed and an equal number of non-depressed participants retrieved 15 memories each, in response to 15 commonly used cue words. Participants reported the first memory that entered in their mind. All memory descriptions were recorded and later transcribed verbatim for content analysis. RESULTS: Depressed participants retrieved autobiographical memories faster, produced shorter memory descriptions and were less likely to recall positive memories than non-depressed participants. Non-depressed participants were more likely to commence retrieval by accessing lifetime period knowledge followed by general event and event specific knowledge, whereas depressed participants showed a tendency to terminate retrieval at the general event level. CONCLUSIONS: It is concluded that depressed participants do adhere to the same hierarchical search strategy as non-depressed participants when retrieving specific autobiographical memories, but that they terminate their search early, resulting in overgeneral memories.
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spelling pubmed-42408422014-11-23 Autobiographical memory and hierarchical search strategies in depressed and non-depressed participants Haque, Shamsul Juliana, Eka Khan, Rahmattullah Hasking, Penelope BMC Psychiatry Research Article BACKGROUND: There is a growing body of literature showing individuals with depression and other trauma-related disorders (e.g., posttraumatic stress disorder) recall more overgeneral and less specific autobiographical memories compared to normal participants. Although the mechanisms underlying overgeneral memory are quite clear, the search strategy operated within the autobiographical knowledge base, at time of recollection, requires further exploration. The current study aimed to examine the hierarchical search sequence used to recall autobiographical memories in depressed and non-depressed participants, with a view to determining whether depressed participants exhibited truncated search strategies. METHODS: Thirteen depressed and an equal number of non-depressed participants retrieved 15 memories each, in response to 15 commonly used cue words. Participants reported the first memory that entered in their mind. All memory descriptions were recorded and later transcribed verbatim for content analysis. RESULTS: Depressed participants retrieved autobiographical memories faster, produced shorter memory descriptions and were less likely to recall positive memories than non-depressed participants. Non-depressed participants were more likely to commence retrieval by accessing lifetime period knowledge followed by general event and event specific knowledge, whereas depressed participants showed a tendency to terminate retrieval at the general event level. CONCLUSIONS: It is concluded that depressed participants do adhere to the same hierarchical search strategy as non-depressed participants when retrieving specific autobiographical memories, but that they terminate their search early, resulting in overgeneral memories. BioMed Central 2014-11-18 /pmc/articles/PMC4240842/ /pubmed/25403551 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12888-014-0310-z Text en © Haque et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Haque, Shamsul
Juliana, Eka
Khan, Rahmattullah
Hasking, Penelope
Autobiographical memory and hierarchical search strategies in depressed and non-depressed participants
title Autobiographical memory and hierarchical search strategies in depressed and non-depressed participants
title_full Autobiographical memory and hierarchical search strategies in depressed and non-depressed participants
title_fullStr Autobiographical memory and hierarchical search strategies in depressed and non-depressed participants
title_full_unstemmed Autobiographical memory and hierarchical search strategies in depressed and non-depressed participants
title_short Autobiographical memory and hierarchical search strategies in depressed and non-depressed participants
title_sort autobiographical memory and hierarchical search strategies in depressed and non-depressed participants
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4240842/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25403551
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12888-014-0310-z
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