Effects of self-relevant cues and cue valence on autobiographical memory specificity in dysphoria

ABSTRACT

Reduced autobiographical memory specificity (rAMS) is a characteristic memory bias observed in depression. To corroborate the capture hypothesis in the CaRFAX (capture and rumination, functional avoidance, executive capacity and control) model, we investigated the effects of self-relevant cues and cue valence on rAMS using an adapted Autobiographical Memory Test conducted with a nonclinical population. Hierarchical linear modelling indicated that the main effects of depression and self-relevant cues elicited rAMS. Moreover, the three-way interaction among valence, self-relevance, and depression scores was significant. A simple slope test revealed that dysphoric participants experienced rAMS in response to highly self-relevant positive cues and low self-relevant negative cues. These results partially supported the capture hypothesis in nonclinical dysphoria. It is important to consider cue valence in future studies examining the capture hypothesis.

KEYWORDS:

• Autobiographical memory specificity
• overgeneral autobiographical memory
• depression
• capture hypothesis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Noboru Matsumoto http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7513-1476

Notes

1. AMT-OI has little evidence of psychometric properties at this stage while AMT-TI and AMT-MI are already examined (Griffith et al. 2009). This is potentially a limitation of the present study.

2. AMT optional instructions (AMT-OI) are available from the first author.

3. This study was approved by ethic committee of Comprehensive Human Sciences, University of Tsukuba.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science [grant number 14J00543].