[Consistent Declarative Memory with Depressive Symptomatology]

Some studies have suggested that potentiated remembrance of negative events on people with depressive disorders seems to be an important factor in the etiology, course and maintenance of depression.

Evaluate the emotional memory in people with and without depressive symptomatology by means of an audio-visual test.

73 university students were evaluated, male and female, between 18 and 40 years old, distributed in two groups: with depressive symptomatology (32) and without depressive symptomatology (40), using the Scale from the Center of Epidemiologic Studies for Depression (CES-D, English Abbreviation) and a cutting point of 20.

There were not meaningful differences between free and voluntary recalls, with and without depressive symptomatology, in spite of the fact that both groups had granted a higher emotional value to the audio-visual test and that they had associated it with emotional sadness.

People with depressive symptomatology did not exhibit the effect of mnemonic potentiation generally associated to the content of the emotional version of the test; therefore, the hypothesis of emotional consistency was not validated.