What predicts overgeneral memory in youth? Testing the CaR-FA-X model longitudinally in community adolescents

Overgeneral autobiographical memory, the tendency to report general memories when asked to report specific event recollections, has been implicated in the development and maintenance of psychopathology. The dominant model of overgeneral memory, the CaR-FA-X model (Williams et al., 2007), proposes that three cognitive processes (increased rumination and avoidance, and reduced executive control) either independently, or in interaction, interfere with successful memory retrieval. Although psychopathology increases significantly during adolescence, no research has tested this model in its entirety, including interaction effects, longitudinally in community youth. We tested the model with 323 adolescents (152 females, 171 males) across four annual assessment points. Increased avoidance predicted higher proportions of overgeneral memories from Time 3 to Time 4, but this association was stronger for youth with elevated depressive symptoms across the four waves, and limited to memories generated in response to negative cue words. This finding may indicate that youth with stable higher levels of depression remember in an overgeneral way to avoid re-elicitation of negative event-related emotions. In youth with lower depression levels across time, the CaR-FA-X mechanisms did not predict overgeneral memory.