Development and psychometric validation of the verbal affective memory test

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Clinical Psychiatry

Background:

• Affective memory biases are implicated in mood disorders like Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).
• Existing verbal affective memory tests lack thorough validation and sensitivity.
• A need exists for reliable tools to assess seasonal variations in emotional memory.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate the Verbal Affective Memory Test-24 (VAMT-24).
• To examine the psychometric properties of VAMT-24 in healthy adults.
• To investigate seasonal affective memory differences in individuals with SAD.

Main Methods:

• Face validity established through valence ratings of 210 common words by healthy Danish adults.
• Psychometric properties assessed in a healthy adult sample.
• Comparison of seasonal recall changes between individuals with SAD and healthy controls.

Main Results:

• VAMT-24 demonstrated good internal consistency, reliability, and convergence with non-affective memory tests.
• Healthy individuals showed higher immediate recall for positive words than negative words.
• Individuals with SAD exhibited a greater decrease in positive word recall from summer to winter, predicting increased depressive symptoms.

Conclusions:

• VAMT-24 is a well-developed and validated tool for assessing verbal affective memory.
• The test shows sensitivity to positive verbal recall bias, potentially due to the use of common words.
• VAMT-24 is recommended for international use in studying affective memory and SAD.