Effects of manipulating the mood components of valence and arousal on the specificity of autobiographical memory in nondepressed women.
Creators: name: Cristi, Carolina.
Publisher: name: Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa
Year: 1999
Subjects: subject: Psychology, Clinical.

description: A theoretically and clinically important cognitive deficit in clinical depression is the inability to be specific in recalling personal memories. This phenomenon has been coined "overgeneral memory" (Williams &amp; Broadbent, 1986) and has, thus for, been interpreted to represent a cognitive vulnerability that renders some individuals more susceptible to depression (Williams, 1996). Although there is a general consensus that this pattern of non-specific recall is not state-dependent, most of the evidence has come from studies that have examined this effect in clinical populations. To gain a better understanding of whether overgeneral memory is independent of the current mood-state, two experiments examined this effect at the level of mood. The two components of mood, affect and arousal, were manipulated to examine their influence on the specificity of autobiographical memory in a non clinical population of women. In Experiment 1, a modified Velten procedure was used to induce elated, depressed, and neutral mood states. Self-reported mood was measured using the POMS-SF and the PANAS-X. The results showed that the induction procedure successfully altered mood in the desired direction. The depressed group reported increased depression, tension, confusion, and fatigue, and also reduced joviality and positive affect immediately following the manipulation, The elated group, in comparison, reported increased joviality and positive affect, and also reduced depression, tension, confusion, and fatigue. The neutral group reported no change in mood. Results from the Autobiographical Memory Test, in which participants were requested to provide a self-defining memory for each of 5 positive and 5 negative cue words, revealed no differences in autobiographical memory specificity between the three groups. There were also no differences in the proportion of general memories produced between positive and negative memory cues across the three groups. However, participants in the depressed condition produced a greater proportion of categoric compared to extended general memories, within the total proportion of general memories produced. In Experiment 2, high and low arousal states were induced through physical exercise. Participants in the low arousal condition, who exercised on a Stairmaster for 45 minutes, reported increased fatigue, and decreased vigor and depression, whereas participants in the high arousal condition, who walked briskly for 10 minutes, reported decreased fatigue and depression, and increased vigor. A low arousal state resulted in an increased proportion of overgeneral memories compared to both the control condition and the high arousal condition. A high arousal state did not influence autobiographical specificity. No cue valence effects were found, and there was no difference in the proportion of categoric or extended memories produced for the three groups. Across both Experiments 1 and 2 the postulated role of working memory in the production of generic autobiographical memories (Williams, 1996) was examined by testing how the various manipulations influenced performance on the Trail Making Tests (TMT). No differences were found among the groups in either experiment, although ceiling effects may have been involved. Taken together, the results indicate that a reduction in the arousal component of mood decreases the capacity to recall specific autobiographical memories. These results suggest that overgeneral memory is a phenomenon at least partly dependent on current mood-state, and more specifically, on the level of energy available to the person at the time of recall.