Clinical Depression, Memory and
Schemata Bias
Depression (clinical and subclinical) has been
linked to impaired performance in a variety of memory experiments, and
additional research has suggested that the effect may partly reflect deficits
in the recognition or employment of informational structure in stimulus
materials. It remains to be demonstrated conclusively whether similar
impairments obtain for implicit memory pro-cesses (in which the subject is
unaware of any conscious recol-lection). There is a different line of research,
however, that bears more directly on depression and automatic (or unconscious)
memory processes. According to the theory of depression of Beck and colleagues
(Beck, 1976; 1983; Beck et al.,
1979), the depressed individual is prone to make negativistic inferences and
generalizations and prone to consequent biases in recall and rec-ognition
memory (e.g., through selective abstraction, overgener-alization,
magnification, minimization). These memory biases have been more broadly
described as mood-congruent recall, referring to distortions in memory based on
current mood state. Mood-congruent recall is an implicit, automatic memory
process (to the extent that mood state may exert a systematic effect on the
content of memory retrieval, without conscious awareness or intention on the
part of the individual).
For clinical purposes, two generic findings from
cognitive research on depression are important to remember. First, depres-sion
is associated with general impairment for explicit memory tasks (recognition
and recall). Secondly, depression is also asso-ciated with a mood-congruent
memory bias. Taken individually, either of these symptoms may interfere with
adaptive coping, be-cause accurate memory is necessary for adaptive and
intelligent behavioral responses. In combination, the two memory difficul-ties
can have a substantial impact on an individual’s perceptions of the self, the
world and the future (Beck’s cognitive triad [Beck, 1976; Beck et al., 1979]), serving both to impair
behavior and to maintain depressive affect. In consequence, memory disturbance
in depression can be an important focus for clinical intervention (Beck et al., 1979), and it should ideally be
considered in the for-mulation of a comprehensive treatment package.
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