Depression and memory narrative type

Research with autobiographical memories has distinguished between memory narratives of specific events and summaries of many events blended together. Depression has been associated with a reduced ability to retrieve and orally relate specific positive memories. This study explored the hedonic bias in memory through collection of written autobiographical memories from 90 nonclinical college students whose mood was assessed for depression. Participants with higher depression scores recalled significantly more summary memories in response to a request for a positive self-defining memory than did participants with lower depression scores. There were no significant differences in the number of single-event and summary memories when participants were asked for a negative memory. We used J. A. Singer and K. H. Moffitt's (1991-1992) scoring system to distinguish between summarized and specific memory narratives.