Autobiographical memory in older adults with and without depressive symptoms
- Autores: Juan Pedro Serrano, José Miguel Latorre Postigo, Margaret Gatz
- Localización: International journal of clinical and health psychology, ISSN 1697-2600, Vol. 7, Nº. 1, 2007, págs. 41-57
- Idioma: inglés
- Enlaces
- Dialnet Métricas: 1 Cita
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Resumen
The aim of this experiment was to examine the overgenerality of autobiographical memory in older adults with depressive symptoms in comparison to nondepressed older adults. 95 older adults with clinically significant depressive symptomatology and 90 nondepressed older adults were asked to generate specific memories in response to a series of positive, negative and neutral cue-words, using the Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT). Evidence for greater overgenerality among those with depressive symptoms was only found for negative cues, while all participants provided far more general than specific memories. Latencies were greater for participants with depressive symptoms than for nondepressed participants, but this finding was not limited to specific memories. There was a strong positivity bias, with more positive memories than negative memories retrieved, across cues. Latency did not differ by valence, but negative cues were more likely than positive cues to lead to failure to retrieve any memory. These positivity effects were markedly stronger for nondepressed respondents than for those with depressive symptomatology. Aged related changes in memory function are suggested as a possible explanation for the overall pattern of findings.
