Autobiographical Memory and Depression in the Later Age: The Bump is a Turning Point

Abstract

This preliminary study integrated previous findings of the distribution of autobiographical memories in the later age according to their age of occurrence, with the overgeneral memory bias predictive of depression. Twenty-five non-demented, Israeli participants between 65-89 years of age provided autobiographical memories to 4 groups of word cues reflecting events from childhood, adolescence, adulthood and late age. Their autobiographical responses were coded for degree of specificity of mentioning people, place and time. They additionally completed the Geriatric Depression Scale (Sheikh & Yesavage, 1986). We found that specificity of memories for adolescence cue-words ("the reminiscence bump") was significantly and inversely correlated with depression (r = -0.61), and this remained significant after controlling for gender and education. The study's limitations and the possibility that puberty hormones may be involved in memory and later age depression are discussed.

Understanding the reminiscence bump: A systematic review

“…A few studies use the Galton-Crovitz cueing method and Robinson word cuing technique [30, 76–78, 81, 82, 86, 105, 106]. The number of word cues used to elicit memories range from 15–124 [15, 16, 74].…”

“…One study elicited personal future life stories of children, and events from those stories [60]. In studies where participants reported autobiographical events for various types of cues, retrieved memories were from personal pasts [15, 16, 30, 33, 59, 61–63, 69,74, 75, 76–78, 81, 86, 89, 90, 92, 93, 96, 98, 104–106, 109, 114]. The following were elicited in various studies: personal memories of adults spanning their life course, meaningful life events, life stories from across participants' life spans, lists of life events for AMs and collective memories, life-lines for both past and future events, and self-defining AMs [17, 22, 35, 66, 70, 72, 73, 91, 95, 97, 99, 102, 103, 107, 108, 110–113].…”

“…Using these methods, the distribution of the future life stories of Danish children illustrated a bump in young adulthood, and this bump consisted of life-script events [60]. Studies discovered bumps from a minimum of 6 years of age to a maximum of 35 years of age [11, 15, 16, 24, 30, 61, 62, 74–76, 78, 81, 82, 88, 89, 95, 106, 109, 114]. One study, using a novel cuing method, revealed two bumps: The first bump appeared when the protagonist of the story was 22 years old, and the second occurred when she was in her 50s and undergoing significant life changes [64].…”

Overgeneral autobiographical memory effect in older depressed adults

“…This phenomenon has been less frequently reported in older samples, although some results support such lower specificity in older adults with depression (Birch & Davidson, 2007). Additionally, limitations in terms of the ability to provide specific memories for cue words related to adolescence was strongly associated with higher levels of depression in a small sample of older adults (Gidron & Alon, 2007).…”

“…Phillips and Williams (1997) found greater overgenerality in older adults with cognitive impairment but no relation between current severity of depression and overgenerality. A limited ability to provide specific memories for cue words related to adolescence was strongly associated with higher levels of depression in a small sample of people in late adulthood (Gidron & Alon, 2007). Compared to older adults without depression, the group with depression retrieved significantly fewer specific memories; however, the latter did not differ with regard to their categoric (memories of a summary type) memory recall (Birch & Davidson, 2007).…”