Impact of depressive symptoms, self‐esteem and neuroticism on trajectories of overgeneral autobiographical memory over repeated trials

Abstract

The present study examined trajectories of change in the frequency of overgeneral autobiographical memory (OGM) over the course of repeated trials, and tested whether particular dimensions of depressive symptomatology (somatic and cognitive‐affective distress), self‐esteem, and neuroticism account for individual differences in these trajectories. Given that depression is associated with impairments in effortful processing, we predicted that over repeated trials depression would be associated with increasingly OGM. Generalised Linear Mixed Models with Penalised Quasi‐Likelihood demonstrated significant linear and quadratic trends in OGM over repeated trials, and somatic distress and self‐esteem moderated these slopes. The form of these interactions suggested that somatic distress and low self‐esteem primarily contribute to OGM during the second half of the trial sequence. The present findings demonstrate the value of a novel analytical approach to OGM that estimates individual trajectories of change over repeated trials.

Notes

We would like to thank Eric Grady, Eva Maron, and Michael Ammermuller for their considerable assistance in conducting the study and Craig Colder for data‐analytical advice.

Omissions were excluded from the analyses reported below. Results were virtually identical when OGMs were contrasted with a category that included both specific memories and omissions.

We thank Phil Barnard for suggesting this explanation to us.