Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

Automatic and effortful memory processes in depressed persons

M L Rohling1, F Scogin

  • 1Department of Psychology, University of Alabama.

Journal of Gerontology
|March 1, 1993
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Social Workers as Research Psychotherapists in an Investigation of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy among Rural Older Adults.

Social work research·2015
Same author

The Dysfunctional Attitudes Scale: factor structure, reliability, and validity with older adults.

Aging & mental health·2004
Same author

A statistical interpretive method for neuropsychological test data.

Neuropsychology review·2002
Same author

Effort has a greater effect on test scores than severe brain injury in compensation claimants.

Brain injury·2001
Same author

Depressive realism: effects of depression severity and interpretation time.

Journal of clinical psychology·2001
Same author

Breaking up is hard to do: unwanted pursuit behaviors following the dissolution of a romantic relationship.

Violence and victims·2000
Same journal

Shakespeare's attitude towards old age.

Journal of gerontology·2010
Same journal

Involution of tissues in fetal life; a review.

Journal of gerontology·2010
Same journal

Attitudes toward aging and the aged; primitive societies.

Journal of gerontology·2010
Same journal

Budgeting for social security.

Journal of gerontology·2010
Same journal

The Hodson Community Center; an experiment in preservation of personality.

Journal of gerontology·2010
Same journal

Prolongation of life with prevention of leukemia by thymectomy in mice.

Journal of gerontology·2010
See all related articles

This study found depression does not directly cause memory loss. However, psychiatric hospitalization and medication negatively impacted memory more than depression itself.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Neuroscience
  • Gerontology

Background:

  • Clinical observations suggest depression impairs memory, especially in older adults, sometimes mimicking dementia (pseudodementia).
  • Prior research on the link between depression and memory deficits remains inconclusive.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the relationship between depression and memory dysfunction across different encoding types.
  • To examine the influence of age on memory performance in depressed and non-depressed individuals.
  • To test the hypothesis that depression in older adults leads to memory deficits indistinguishable from dementia.

Main Methods:

  • Compared memory performance in 30 depressed patients, 20 psychiatric controls, and 30 normal controls.
  • Utilized memory tasks varying in encoding effort: effortful (free recall, paired associates) and automatic (frequency, location).

Related Experiment Videos

  • Assessed the impact of age on memory encoding.

    • Main Results:

    • Depression was not significantly related to memory deficits across the tested tasks.
    • Psychiatric hospitalization and psychotropic medication use showed a stronger negative association with memory than depression.
    • Age-related deficits were observed in effortful memory encoding but not in automatic memory tasks.
    • No interaction between depression and age supported the concept of pseudodementia.

    Conclusions:

    • Depression, in this study, did not appear to be a direct cause of memory impairment.
    • Factors such as psychiatric hospitalization and medication may have a more significant impact on memory function than depression itself.
    • Age impacts effortful memory encoding more than automatic memory processes.
    • The findings do not support the notion of 'pseudodementia' caused by depression interacting with age.