A study of autobiographical memories in depressed and nondepressed elderly individuals

Overgeneral autobiographical memory effect in older depressed adults

OBJECTIVES

This research aims to investigate the characteristics of autobiographical retrieval in a group of older depressed adults compared with a control group of the same age.

METHOD

The sample was recruited from local primary care services. All participants were administered a demographic questionnaire and completed the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE; Lobo, A., Ezquerra, J., Gómez-Burgada, F., Sala, J.M., & Seva-Díaz, A. (1979). El Mini-Examen Cognoscitivo: Un test sencillo y práctico para detectar alteraciones intelectuales en pacientes médicos. Actas Luso-Españolas de Neurología, Psiquiatría y Ciencia, 3, 189-202), the Life Satisfaction Index (LSI; Stock, W., Okun, M., & Gómez, J. (1994). Subjective well-being measures: Reliability and validity among Spanish elders. International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 38, 221-235), and the Beck Hopelessness Scale (BHS; Beck, A.T., Weissman, A., Lester, D., & Trexler, L. (1974). The measurement of pessimism: The hopelessness scale. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 42, 861-865). Finally, all participants completed the Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT; Williams, J.M.G., & Broadbent, K. (1986). Autobiographical memory in suicide attempters. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 95, 144-149).

RESULTS

Older adults with depression were less specific in their memories than the controls. Higher categoric retrieval for negative cue words compared with positive cue words was only found for older adults with depression. Specific retrieval in the group without depression was positively related to Life Satisfaction and negatively to hopelessness.

CONCLUSION

The overgeneral effect appeared for older adults with depression due to the higher presence of extended memories (events lasting for more than 24 h) rather than categoric retrievals (summary of repeated events). The strong correlation between specific memories and Life Satisfaction among non-depressed older adults suggests its potential role as a protective factor for depression.

Resilience and levels of reserve capacity in later adulthood: Perspectives from life-span theory

The goal of this article is to explore the utility of integrating two lines of research on questions of modifiability or plasticity of human development. The first line, dealing with the notion of resilience, originated within the field of clinical developmental research. The second line, concerned with developmental reserve capacity, evolved primarily within the field of life-span developmental psychology. Resilience addresses questions of maintenance and recovery of adaptation in the face of stress. In addition, ideas about levels of reserve capacity, rooted in life-span developmental psychology, emphasize the potential for growth. A review of research in the areas of cognitive and self-related functioning provides evidence for resilience as well as developmental reserve capacity in adulthood and old age. It is argued that across the life span reserve capacity is increasingly allocated to resilience-related processes (maintenance of functioning and recovery from dysfunction) rather than growth. A model of successful aging is discussed which suggests that, by means of selective optimization with compensation, old age nevertheless continues to hold the potential for selective growth.

Veterans' disclosure of trauma to healthcare providers

OBJECTIVE

The purpose of this study is to gain a better understanding of patients' trauma disclosure to health professionals.

METHOD

A convenience sample of 173 veterans in outpatient treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the Veterans Health Administration completed surveys querying trauma history, reasons for trauma disclosure and perceived provider responses.

RESULTS

For half of the participants, a healthcare provider was the first person to whom they disclosed. Reasons were primarily external, such as pressure from others. Although 72% were glad to disclose, 45% perceived at least one negative provider response.

CONCLUSION

Patients disclose to a wide range of provider types and perceive varied responses. Providers' awareness of the need to be sensitive to trauma disclosure could facilitate treatment for PTSD.

Primacy and Recency Effects Found Using Affective Word Lists

This experiment tested hypotheses linking the right cerebral regulation of hostility and affective verbal learning. First, patterns of recall for positive, negative, and neutral affective list learning among high- and low-hostile individuals were examined. It was expected that low-hostiles would recall more items from the positive list and that high-hostiles would recall more words from the negative affective list. Also, independent of groups, it was expected that there would be a primacy effect for negative words and a recency effect for positive words. Exploratory analyses examined the relation between hostility and primacy and recency effects on the positive and negative word lists. High- and low-hostile participants (n = 65) completed the positive list learning task, the negative list learning task, or the neutral list learning task. Data analyses revealed no significant difference between the high- and low-hostile groups on the different affective lists. However, results of the present investigation reliably demonstrated the predicted primacy and recency effects. There was a primacy effect for the negative affective list and a recency effect for the positive affective list. These findings are consistent with previous research investigating the acquisition pattern of affective verbal learning.

Tension-type headache and stressful events: the role of selective memory in the reporting of stressors

This study examined evidence for the role of selective memory for stressful events in women with headache. Previous studies have reported that on retrospective measures of stress, those with tension-type headache report more stressful events and rate the events as more stressful than did headache-free controls. However, when ratings are made concurrently, participants with headache and controls did not differ in their ratings of equivalent stressors presented in the laboratory. One theory for why differences are found in stress ratings made retrospectively, but not concurrently, is that selective memory biases recollection of past events in patients with headache. This study compared self-report ratings of stressful events and their perceived impact made either concurrently or retrospectively to determine if selective memory might explain the discrepancies found in earlier studies. Participants included 20 patients with tension-type headache and 22 headache-free controls. Participants were compared on hourly, daily, and weekly measures of stressors and their perceived impact via hourly and nightly visual analog scale ratings, the Daily Stress Inventory, and the Weekly Stress Inventory. If support was to be offered to the hypothesis that selective memory biases the retrospective memory of patients with headache, then an interaction between group assignment (ie, headache versus control group) and time of rating would be expected. No such interaction occurred. Results from the study suggest that all participants have a tendency to overestimate stress on retrospective measures, but that patients with headache do not do so at a significantly different rate than do headache-free controls. The alternative hypothesis that patients with headache tend to appraise everyday events as more stressful is supported.

Cortical influences in emotion

Emotions may be classified into two major divisions: experience and behavior. Because the brain is critical for mediating emotional experience and behavior, diseases of the brain may induce changes in emotional behavior and experience. Disorders of almost all portions of the cerebral hemisphere, including the cortex, limbic system, and basal ganglia, have been associated with changes of emotional experience and behavior. Dysfunction of the cerebral cortex may be associated with disorders of emotional communication. Whereas deficits of the left hemisphere appear to impair the comprehension and expression of propositional language, deficits of the right hemisphere may be associated with an impaired ability to comprehend and express emotional gestures such as facial expression and emotional prosody. Some patients have either prosodic or facial emotional deficits. Some have only expressive or receptive deficits. However, others may be globally impaired, either within or across modalities. The posterior portions of the neocortex appear to be important for comprehension and the anterior for expression of both emotional prosody and faces. Injury and dysfunction of the limbic system may also alter emotional communication and experience. For example, damage to the amygdala may be associated with an impaired ability to recognized emotional faces and a reduction of affect, especially anger, rage, and fear. In contrast, lesions of the septal region may be associated with increased ragelike behaviors. Seizures frequently emanate from the limbic system, and seizures that start in the amygdala can induce fear and perhaps even rage. Disorders of the basal ganglia may also be associated with defects of emotional communication and experience. Patients with Parkinson's disease not only may be impaired at communicating emotions with both expressive and receptive deficits but also are often depressed and anxious. Patients with Huntington's disease may have emotional comprehension deficits with an impaired ability to recognize emotional faces and prosody. Patients with Huntington's disease may have mood changes even before motor dysfunction becomes manifest. Many of the defects in emotional experience may be related to the associated changes in neurotransmitter systems. Unfortunately, how alteration of neurotransmitters induce mood changes remains unknown. In this chapter we review the feedback and central theories of emotional experience. Although we argue against the postulates that feedback is critical to the experience of emotions, we do suspect that feedback may influence emotions. Emotions may be conditioned and may use thalamic-limbic circuits, as proposed by LeDoux. However, most emotional behaviors and experiences are induced by complex stimuli that an isolated thalamus could not interpret. The cerebral cortex of humans has complex modular systems that analyze stimuli, develop percepts, and interpret meaning. We discuss the proposal that the experience of emotions is dimensional. Almost all primary emotions can be described with two or three factors, including valence, arousal, and motor activation.