Autobiographical memory in schizophrenia: An examination of the distribution of memories.

Abstract

Patients with schizophrenia display numerous memory impairments. Examination of autobiographical memory distribution across the life span can constrain theories of how schizophrenia affects memory. Previously, schizophrenic patients were shown to produce fewer memories from early adulthood than from childhood or the recent past (A. Feinstein, T. E. Goldberg, B. Nowlin, & D. R. Weinberger, 1998), this temporal paucity corresponding with illness onset. The current study examined this issue further using a different (noncued) method. Age-matched schizophrenic patients (n = 21) and controls (n = 21) were to freely generate 50 episodes, after which they dated these memories. Patients generated fewer memories than did controls, especially from the recent decade. When the overall lower production of memories was controlled for, the groups displayed equivalent recency effects. It was concluded that patients' paucity of memories generated from the recent decade reflects encoding or acquisition problems, which may be associated with the illness period.

Autobiographical memory of adolescence and early adulthood events: An investigation in schizophrenia

“…In contrast, the early component of the reminiscence bump concerning social identity, and corresponding mainly to memories of public events, seemed relatively preserved. These results are consistent with previous evidence that autobiographical memory impairments of patients diagnosed with schizophrenia are particularly marked in late adolescence and early adulthood (Elvevag et al, 2003;Feinstein et al, 1998;Riutort et al, 2003). In keeping with the proposal that impaired personal identity is a fundamental disturbance in schizophrenia (Bleuler, 1911;Jaspers, 1963), suggest that this illness is associated with an impairment of autobiographical memories of events that had occurred during the last stage of personal identity development.…”

“…Moreover, they recall few specific autobiographical memories (Riutort et al, 2003). The deficit of autobiographical memories is particularly marked in late adolescence and early adulthood (Elvevag et al, 2003;Feinstein et al, 1998;Riutort et al, 2003). Recently, conscious awareness associated with autobiographical memory has been investigated in schizophrenia (Danion et al, 2005).…”

“…In addition, the defective sense of self may itself reduce the accessibility of highly self-relevant autobiographical memories. Second, a defect of encoding or acquisition processes may account for the aggravation of autobiographical memory abnormalities reported after the onset of the disease (Danion et al, 2005;Elvevag et al, 2003;Riutort et al, 2003). Third, some autobiographical memory abnormalities may merely be caused by the fact that, owing to their illness, patients had a poorer and more restricted life than normal subjects and, hence, encountered few memorable life events.…”

Selective Deficit of Autobiographical Incident Memory in Subjects with Bipolar Disorder

“…Since AM can cover the entire lifespan from childhood to recent life, many studies on AM in other psychiatric or neurological diseases have investigated the temporal gradient pattern of AM [5,[12][13][14] , which we still do not know for BD. It is strongly suspected that BD patients with a large number of episodes or long duration of illness might show severer impairments in AM.…”

The relationship between insight and autobiographical memory for emotional events in schizophrenia

“…Autobiographical memory recall is compromised in schizophrenia (e.g., Elvevåg et al, 2003;Riutort et al, 2003;Danion et al, 2005;McLeod et al, 2006;Cuervo-Lombard et al, 2007;D'Argembeau et al, 2008) with recent findings suggesting that recollection of negative autobiographical events is particularly affected (Neumann et al, 2007;MacDougall et al, unpublished results). It has been suggested that an impoverished autobiographical memory may hinder the ability to think in more complex ways about oneself or others (Dimaggio et al, 2012).…”